My most recent cake commission that I worked on last week was a 40th Birthday cake. One of the major parts of the brief was that it had to be transported to Cornwall for the birthday celebrations, so this was the major factor to consider in my designs. There is nothing worse than worrying about a cake all the way to your destination (as I always do when I am delivering) so intricate designs and gravity-defying design elements were a definite no-no!
The client decided on a simple 'Bubble' design with added pearls and daisies to make the design a little more feminine, and chose a vanilla sponge and buttercream with a zingy lemon curd filling. To add to the design we added some candy-cane striped numbers and some polka dot letters to finish off the cake.
Making the decorations
To make the candy stripe letters I rolled out two long sausages of fondant...
...and then twisted them together to give the striped effect. I find that it helps if your fondant is a little sticky at this stage as it is easier to bond the two colours together. If they are too dry they may start to peel away from each other when you start to form your letters.
It's entirely up to you what style of letter or number you make, but I like to add twirly ends to mine. I always check the size of the figures on the base of the cake tin to make sure that they are the correct size when the rest of the elements are applied.
I then cut out a range of yellow and white daisies and added their pearly centres.
Cake assembly
After baking I split the cake, filled it with lemon curd and vanilla buttercream, crumb coated it and then chilled it...
...before covering it with white sugar paste and adding the yellow ribbon.
I placed the wording and candy stripe numbers to check the placement, before sticking them down with edible glue and royal icing.
To tie the letters in with the polka dot theme, I then added tiny gold dots using edible gold paint.
Once the central elements had been applied, I then started adding my sugarpaste 'Bubbles' in a mixture of yellow and gold. I sprayed the white bubbles with a mixture of gold lustre and edible glitter before sticking them to the cake with edible glue.
The only thing better than normal glitter...is edible glitter!
When I had added all of the bubbles I used two different sizes of edible pearls to highlight the letters and decorate against the ribbon. I then added the daisies last in key places around the cake.
The finished cake was beautifully sparkly under the lights in the kitchen, and had a lovely sheen when I photographed it in the morning. The client really liked it when I delivered it, so I really hope the cake made it to the birthday celebrations with all decorations still in tact!
