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Saturday, July 13, 2013

The Behemoth

A few months ago, I received a request for a 1st birthday cake that had to feed a lot of people! It had to be a 3-tier tall cake, each tier having 3-4 layers within it. The bottom tier was 10", the middle tier was 8", and the top tier was 6". This would be by far the biggest cake I'd ever made so far! I was given a picture of how the tiers were to look like. So I tried my best to recreate that, but at the same time didn't want to copy every single detail.

The bottom tier was about 5" tall, and was covered in white buttercream icing. I gave it a blue Chevron fondant pattern.

The middle tier was about 4" tall, and the client wanted this covered in yellow icing with white dots. The dots were made by rolling out white fondant, and using the ends of a Wilton tip to cut out perfect circles.

The top tier was about 5" tall, and again covered in white icing. They wanted the letter V on a fondant plaque, since that was the birthday girl's initial. I encircled the middle of this tier with a blue fondant ribbon overlapping a yellow one. I used Wilton silicone molds to create pink and yellow fondant rose buttons to decorate the bottom of this tier.

They requested butterflies adorn the cake. I didn't want it to look too busy, so I just made a few. I rolled out purple gumpaste, pressed a butterfly stencil into it, cut it out, bent it in a way that looks like the butterfly is resting on a flower, and let it dry overnight. I then dusted it carefully with purple pearl dust (edible!) so that the details of the wings from the stencil would show. Each butterfly was carefully placed onto a tier.

Thee also wanted a fondant "1" at the top of the cake. This was also done ahead of time using gumpaste and toothpicks so that it could be stuck into the top and then easily removed once the cake was cut into. She also requested a flower on top, so I layered fondant rose petals (dried ahead of time) on top of each other.

The bottom of each tier was then piped with white dots to give it a completed look.

This one weighed a lot, and took two people to carry it to the car!

 

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Its a bird! Its a plane! No, its...

SUPERMAN!!!

Yet another birthday, this time for a grown-up comic book superhero fan. I really liked the Frozen Buttercream Transfer done with the Hello Kitty cake and wanted to try it again, this time to try and perfect it.

I had made regular vanilla cupcakes, and topped it with a blue buttercream swirl. Yes, I used Spiderman cupcake wrappers since I couldn't find Superman ones anywhere!! (Is it bad to mix DC Comics with Marvel??)

I piped out the Superman logo backwards onto wax paper, and froze it overnight. The next morning, I carefully peeled off the paper and placed the logo carefully onto each cupcake. A few of them broke or weren't fully frozen yet, which was expected. I had made extras just in case!

The longer they sat on the cupcake, the more they started to melt and wilt onto the blue icing below. None of them broke off or bled onto the blue icing though, which was good news. In the end, I was happy with how these turned out. I think because these logos were smaller than the Hello Kitty one, it worked out better.