Gold Drip Cake

I hate gold drip cakes.  All the tedious painting of every single drip only to discover at the end that you don't like the color.  Brassy, much, much too brassy.  I tried painting over it was a softer color, but the brass still glowed through.  Oh well.  Nothing to do but say, "Yes, that is the color I wanted!"  

I wasn't too happy about the color of the sprinkles not matching the color of the flowers either.  The customer wanted Rose Gold for both, but I just couldn't get the colors to match.  The flowers weren't rose gold enough and the sprinkles where too dark of a rose gold.  I tried mixing some pink sprinkles with the rose gold, but that didn't look good.  I tried putting more rose gold luster dust on the flower but that didn't help either.  Ugh...  Cake decorating is so hard...   

But the gum paste flowers came out nice.  Roses and hydrangeas. 

The macarons came out nice too.  I use the Swiss method where you heat the sugar and eggs whites in a ban-marie till the sugar is dissolved and then beat the egg white/sugar mixture.  I find this method easier and more foolproof than the French or Italian method.  The recipe is just equal parts egg white, granulated sugar, almond flour, and powdered sugar.  Look at those feet!

On this cake I also made some custom embossers for the name "Brooklyn" and gum paste cutters for the "16" using my trusty Ender Pro 3D Printer.  I wrote a whole blog post about 3D Printers for Cookie Cutters.  You can find it HERE.  The 3D Printer has become my favorite cake decorating tool. 

And don't. don't look at that smear of gold paint between the bottom of the K and L.  I tried everything to get rid of it, but I kept making it worse.  Hopefully the birthday girl won't notice.

So another learning experience.  

Happy Decorating,

Carol