Rustic/Weathered Basket of Tulips - Cake

I love it when a disaster waiting to happen turns out pretty well.  I made this cake for my mom's birthday back in March.

I had planned on filling the basket with gumpaste roses I had made a few weeks earlier, but once inside the basket the flowers just looked too wimpy.  Not enough color and not nearly large enough.  As a last minute fix I used some fresh tulips I had bought for my mom's birthday.

Besides the panic over the flower, this rustic, weathered looking basket was pretty easy to make.  It starts of course with a cake that I sliced in an oblong shape.

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After frosting the cake I started on the "wooden slats" that make up the basked.  To get the weathered look, I used a wafer paper technique that is super quick and easy.  First you need some funky colored fondant.  I wanted the basket to be gray so I tinted some fondant gray and then added some left over brown and yellow fondant I have from other cakes.

Next I cut the fondant to match the 8x11" wafer paper.  Wafer paper is made from potato starch, water and vegetable oil.  It is considered edible, but I wouldn't eat it.  I actually peeled off the wafer paper covered fondant and discard it before serving the cake. 

After cutting the fondant to match the shape of the wafer paper, you start to dampen the paper with water.  Add the water slowly till the wafer paper starts to buckle and warp.

When the paper is wet enough, take a small rolling pin and roll it over the paper. The rolling action will stretch the fondant underneath and cause the wet wafer paper to rip and tear.  The more you rip the paper, the more weathered the final wood with look.  Note that over a few hours the water in the wafer paper will evaporate and the wafer paper will dry and crinkle even more.

When the wafer paper looks ripped enough, just cut the fondant into strips to fit the height of your cake

Next start sticking the strips to the side of the cake.  See those tulips in the background?  They are going to be sacrificed for this cake!

I added horizontal pieces at the top and bottom of the basket.

For the handle I just cut a long strip of the weathered fondant and let it dry overnight on top of a cake pan.  Sadly the handle wasn't stiff enough to stand up on its own, so I added some thick wire and secured the wire to the handle using more weathered fondant.

As a last step in making the weathered fondant look more realistic I made what looked like nail heads at the top of  each board and where the handle connected to the basket.  I just pushed a sharp tool into the fondant, and added a little black and brown powdered food coloring to give it that extra ump.

At this point I tried placing the gumpaste flowers I had pre-made made for this cake, but they looked horrible.  They were way too small, and I only had about 1/3 as many as I needed.  In desperation I decided to sacrifice my mom's bouquet of tulips for her cake.  I wasn't sure if tulips were poisonous, or if they had any chemicals on them, so I put some parchment paper on top of the cake to protect it from any nasty stuff.  I also added another piece of weathered fondant to hide the cut ends of the tulips.

So here is the finished cake.  Can you tell that it is cake?  Surprisingly none of the guest at the party realized what it was.   A lot of people gave my mom flowers for her birthday, so everyone thought the cake was another bouquet of flower.  How cool is that!

Happy Decorating Folks,

Carol



Supply List: 

Mona Lisa Fondant
Wafer Paper
Wilton Ribbon Cutter
Tylose powder
Wood Grain Texture Mat
Edible Black Luster Dust

Horse Farm Cake

This is a cake I made for my first cousin's little girl - Piper.  The party was being held at a horse farm, so Katie asked for a cake to match the venue.

It came out sort-of-cute, but I had some issue with the color.  Katie asked for light purple, but to my eye it came out more grayish-lavender.  I had forgotten how difficult it is to color some fondants purple.

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Thankfully I had the forethought to test different colors on my Mona Lisa fondant before I tinted the whole batch.  I've tried lots of different fondants and Mona Lisa is my favorite, but sadly the Mona Lisa fondant does some funny things when you try and tint it violet.  It has something to do with the pH of the fondant and its reaction to the Red Dye #5 in the food color.  I tried all the violets and purples I had on hand, and finally settled on Americolor's Electric Purple.  Yes, the Electric Purple food gel gave me this muted grayish-lavender color.

The first component of this cake that I made was the rope-style  number 5.  This cake gave me an excuse to buy the Artway ACE Food Safe Extruder.   With the extruder you can make perfect strings of "rope", and lots of other things.  I've tried other hobby clay extruders, but they break very easily, and leave nasty black streaks on the fondant.  The ACE Extruder works great, and because of that it is in high demand from both clay and cake artist.  If you order one, be prepared to wait, and wait, and wait.

Thankfully the ACE arrived in time for this cake, and it made some great looking rope.  I used fondant stiffened with Tylose powder, and squeezed it through the extruder.  I positioned the rope to match a wire armature I made of the number "5", and gently pressed the wire into the fondant.  I couldn't really push the wire into the fondant because it was squashing the "front" side of the rope and flattening it out.  Once I had the impression of the wire in the fondant, I remove the wire, used an x-acto knife to cut a deeper groove along the mark, and then gently pushed the wire into the groove.  I let the rope number 5 dry for a few days, and then I mixed up some grunge and covered the wire.

The gunge dried rock hard, so it both secured and hid the wire from view.

For the horse on the side of the cake I found an image I liked and cut the fondant to match.

I made some fence boards from strips of brown fondant, and used toothpicks to guide the placement of the strips.

The "boards" are textured using a wood grain texture mat, and the fondant covering the cake drum is textured using an alligator skin texture mat.  I was running low on the purple fondant, so I just covered the outer rim of the cake drum.  And because of the random look of the alligator impression, you can't even see where the pieces of fondant are joined together.

The final step of the cake was putting Piper's name on the cake.  Again I used the purple fondant and the ACE extruder.  But I wasn't happy with the contrast of the muted purple letter against the white fondant.

The name just didn't pop out, so I painted the letters with edible gold luster dust mixed with lemon extract.  I also dusted the purple stars on top of the cake and the purple flowers by the fence post.

So here is the finished cake.  I think it would have looked a lot better in pink, but Piper is a purple kind of girl.  Happy 5th Birthday, Piper.

Happy Decorating Folks,

Carol



Supply List: 

Mona Lisa Fondant
Americolor's Electric Purple
ACE Food Safe Extruder
Tylose powder
14" Cake Drum
Alligator Impression Mat (used on the fondant covering the cake drums)
Wood Grain Texture Mat
Edible Gold Luster Dust

Flowers on Woodland Stump - In cake form

I like when friends & family request a cake and let me pick the design.  I get to try out a cake design from my "Things To Try" list. Wahoo.  Here is my latest creation.  I call this one Flowers on a Woodland Stump - or Stumpy Flowers for short.

I know the flowers on the cake are an odd assortment of shapes and colors, but that's because most of them are the left over from other cakes I've made.  It is strange, but once I put a gumpaste flower on a cake I have no qualms about throwing the flower away after the cake is cut and served, but for some reason I can't make myself throw away gumpaste flowers that I made but didn't use on the intended cake.

My strange quirk came in handy when I needed to make a last minute cake for a friend's 50th birthday party.

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There are lots of different flowers on this cake, but the peonies are my favorite. With just the peony petal cutter and a styrofoam ball, you get a beautiful flower with very little effort.  Just cut out a bunch of petals in various sizes, and give them a little texture with a veiner wand.  The veiner wand is this great all purpose tool that you can use to add a little texture to any flower or leaf.  With this baby you don't need a different silicon veiner for each flower type.  Saves on storage space and money.  Win-win.

After the petals are made and textured, just glue them to the styrofoam ball.  I use both the 1" and 1-1/2" balls for my peonies.  To see this process in action just look up gumpaste peonies on YouTube.  Here is a link to the Global Sugar Art video on peonies.

I allowing each layer of petals to dry a bit before putting on the next layer.

You can make the peony small by using less petals (and a smaller styrofoam ball), or make them huge and fluffy by using more petals.  In the peony making videos they tell you to wire the larger petals, but I don't bother with that.  I just glue all the petals to the styrofoam ball.  Saves a lot of time and materials.

For the bark of the "stump" I used a Tree Bark Texture Mold.  I melted chocolate chips and poured the chocolate into the mold.  I spread the chocolate into all the crevices, and then put the mold into the freezer to speed up the hardening of the chocolate.

Then I unmolded the solid chocolate plank...

And then broke the large block into smaller pieces that roughly fit the height of the cake.  You don't need to be precise or exact, the bark looks better if it is a little messy and oddly shaped. Stick the pieces of chocolate to the cake using chocolate frosting.  Any gaps between the pieces of chocolate can be filled with chocolate icing.  And don't worry if the frosting is a different color than the chocolate.  The bark looks much better if it has different tones and colors.  You can also dust the chocolate with edible food color powders (brown, green, white) to make it look even better. (I forgot to do that on this cake so the bark looked a little monotoned.)

The mold for making bark worked pretty well, but you need to be careful not to make the chocolate too thick.  If it is too thick it is hard to break the plank into appropriately sized pieces, and frankly it waste a lot of chocolate.  And let the party goers know that the bark is chunks of Ghiradelli chocolate and not fondant.  I couldn't believe that people were throwing away all that luscious chocolate thinking it was nasty fondant!

The topper on the cake was a last minute addition.  I have this Cricut Explorer that I don't use nearly enough.  I bought it thinking I could use it to cut out fondant and gumpaste, but I never got it to work correctly.  So now I just use the Cricut to cut out random things - like this cake topper personalized with the birthday girl's name and age.  Kind of cool, huh??  And all it cost was $1 for the sheet of red glitter paper, well that and the $200 for the Cricut.

So I think the birthday girl was pleased with her cake.  Happy Birthday, Gwen.  Hope we are both around for you 100th birthday.  I wonder what the cakes will look like in the year 2068???

Happy Decorating,

Carol