I made a cake for my niece's birthday and boy has it been a learning experience. I started yesterday making the things I could make ahead
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| These were various sizes of leaves. |
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| I love these little flowers. I tap edible gold dust into the centers and it looks awesome! |
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| In my original plans I was going to be using all of these. Plans changed between 9 pm and 1 am last night when I decided to do.... |
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| This tower. I decided to just try it and see how it turned out. It was great! |
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Then came this morning...
I am just going to have to find a good cake recipe that is sturdy enough for tier cakes. The box cakes fall apart way too easily. We also used homemade icing and I got the recipe too thin. Considering it was107 degrees outside today it really wouldn't have mattered. That stuff would have melted no matter how thick it was. I freaked out at noon because the cake was falling apart. We ended up going and getting more fondant so I could cover the cakes. I've only done one fondant covered cake and it wasn't very good:
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| Some friends got married so I made this as a surprise the next time they came over. |
I did a rush job on a lot of it and it was still leaning to the right a bit but I think it turned out pretty well considering how many problems I had. I know one thing. I am going to learn to do fondant before my daughter's birthday. We always have her party outside and this stuff doesn't melt!
This was the finished cake:
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| All I can see are the splotches of icing from where I was trying to get leaves and flowers on quickly and how the castle part is leaning. I do love Rapunzel's tower so dang much though. I am proud of that! |
I left my camera at home so I don't have any other pictures. I finished this 10 min before I had to leave so I'm not beating myself up about it. The only important thing was that the birthday girl loved it :)
The key to a tiered cake is to use thick enough wooden dowels in the base cake so the top tier is being supported by the dowel not by the cake. the top tier's base (normally they are plastic with a notch for the supports) shouldn't be touching the icing all that much, just enough so there isn't a gap) No one explains this in DIY cakes, it's just something the pros do. When I worked in a fancy cake shop the back of the shop looked like a hardware store.
ReplyDeleteAlso, in heat, you want to use as little fondont as you can, the heavier the fondont the harder it is on the cake.
great job BTW
Thank you! I've just been figuring things out by myself as I go along. I don't know what I'm going to do for her birthday cake :( I'd planned to do a cottage on top of the cake for Snow White & the dwarves. The party is at a local park and it's H*O*T down here in August. The frosting was melting off of her cake last year. I may have to get my house straightened up and have it here instead.
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