The Bake More: Trifecta of Rosette Cakes

The last few months have been so busy. Between work, family weddings, graduations, birthdays, and the corresponding CAKE for each occasion, I haven't had time to document my (mis)adventures. So I'm going to try and bundle some of them together.

First bundle is a Trifecta of Rosette Cakes. Rosette are so pretty, so delicate, so girly-girl. Rosette Cakes must be the trend this year because I had three requested in the last few months. One was for a baby shower....

One for my Mom's first cousin, who turned 96...

And one for a bridal shower for my sister-in-law's niece.

Whew, that is a lot of rosettes. Thankfully they are easy to make. Here is a YouTube video that I found the most useful for learning to pipe the rosettes.

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My first attempt at a rosette was with Goldie's cake so I went a little overboard with the placement of the rosettes. I scored guide line into the cake using Wilton' Cake Marker, and then used a circle cookie cutter to mark where each rosette went (I wanted to make sure each rosette was exactly the same size.)

Then I started piping rosettes using Wilton's big 1M tip. First row, finished so I used the cookie cutter again to mark the location of each rosette. Overkill I know.

The second tier used the "spoon" texture method. (You just drag the back of a spoon through the soft buttercream as you spin the cake on a turntable.) And because I'm horrible at cutting supports and placing the second tier, I had to pipe something to hide the gap between the tiers.

But I wasn't happy with the camouflage of the gap, so I added some Wilton sugar pearls. What a time consuming and tedious job to individually place each pearl! (FYI: The bentnose micro pliers is a jewelry making tool. These tools work great for cake making because they are lightweight, compact, and they let you get into tight places without disturbing the buttercream or fondant.)

I made the name plate from fondant using a plaque cookie cutter, and the letters/numbers from gumpaste using Funky's Upper Case Letter Cutters.

And at the end I threw on some tiny pink fondant flower and a few more sugar pearls, and called it a day.

Here we are at the party. Happy Birthday, Goldie. Goldie is on the left, and my Mom is on the right.

On the bridal shower cake I used an interesting Round Pearl/Bubble Mold to make the ribbon-like cluster of pearls. It worked pretty well, but the mold needed to be dusted with cornstarch, and the fondant needed to be mixed with a little Tylose Powder to keep the fondant ribbon from stretching out of shape as I gently squeezed it from the mold . On the Amazon reviews for the mold someone suggested that freezing the mold/fondant helped the fondant release, but I didn't find that it helped. In the end all that was needed for a quick release was the Tylose stiffened fondant, a little cornstarch, and a few minutes of drying time.

In the end I was happy with the results of the mold. Using the mold was so much easier than placing the individual pearls, and from a distance you can't even tell that the pearls aren't real. On the bridal shower cake, the pattern of rosettes was a little different from the other two. Instead of a tight, overlapping pattern, the bride-to-be wanted a more random placement of the rosette with the space between the rosettes filled with small star flowers.

In hindsight I should have positioned the second tier's pearl ribbon a little higher because the rosette's are hiding the lower portion of the ribbon. I also wasn't too happy with the color of the rosettes. The color was supposed to be "blush" but it came out a little too pink. Oh well, live and learn...

Here is the finished cake at the party.