Of all the days that I had marked out on the timetable for the wedding cake, unfortunately today has been the one I was least looking forward to. Covering cakes with fondant seems to be my nemesis. I can always get it looking ok, and it tends to be passable, but it's the one thing that I just cannot seem to perfect, and it does fill me with dread and stress when I have to do it. However, I will not be deterred, and as you can see below the end result was actually quite pretty.
I set up all my equipment for baking this morning, using yet another Peggy Porschen recipe. Instead of whole vanilla beans I used Taylor & Colledge Organic Vanilla Bean Paste which I have to say was delicious! It contains the seeds of the vanilla pod so you get a pretty speckled look to your batter and I also added half a teaspoon to the vanilla buttercream which gave a delicious taste. You can find out more about Taylor & Colledge here.
Once the cakes were baked and cooled, I levelled them all to make sure they they were all flat.
Next I spread a thin layer of buttercream onto the cake board to keep the bottom layer in place.
I then started to layer the cake. When making Victoria sponges before with jam, I have sometimes had an issue with the jam seeping out and staining the buttercream and sugar paste covering, so this time I made a dipped ridge all the way around the outside with the buttercream, and added the jam to the centre.
This meant that when I sandwiched the next layer on top, the jam stayed securely inside, meaning no leakages, yay!
I have never done this with a cake before, but I actually go a spirit level out and placed it on top of a cake lifter to check it was level, and to my amazement it was pretty spot on! I then put a wooden dowel through the centre of the cake to keep everything centred.
I invested in a side scraper for this cake, and it really does make a difference when putting on the crumb coat. Everything looked neat and precise and was perfect ready to go into the fridge for a chill.
Once the cake had chilled, I put the first layer of sugar paste on down to the bottom of the cake to make sure that the sides down to the board were straight. I was not happy with the bottom layer so I covered the icing with a thin coat of clear alcohol and added the second layer.
With some judicious smoothing I was fairly happy with the top layer so I cut my ribbons to length ready to be attached.
For the satin ribbon I used a thin layer of water added with a paintbrush to stick it to the sugar paste, however the lace was trickier. I made up a sugar glue from icing sugar and water, dotted a small amount on to each petal of the flower in the lace and then held it in place until it dried. Maybe it was because I was at the same level as the cake for a long time that I began to notice a few more flaws...!
Once the ribbon was attached I had a play with all of the sugar paste elements to check the colours. The rose petals are going to look lovely against the nude cream and the lace, and even through the butterflies and small roses will be on the cupcakes, it was just nice to see that the colours for the whole display will work well together.
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