Technique-wise there is nothing elaborate or complicated about this cake, but nevertheless I love how it came out. It looks elegant, and I normally suck at making elegant. LOL. The customer ordered a cake for his wife's 30th birthday, and he was very specific about what he wanted: navy and white marbled for the bottom tier, white for the top tier, and 2-3 white orchids. That is it. He wanted simple and elegant.
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For the orchids I used a cutter and veiner set, and I used this veining board to help insert the wire into the petals. I also cut the 3 pronged Sepal piece into three separate petals and wired each one individually. Making the flowers was actually an easy process.
I used pink edible marker to draw the lines and dots on the Lip of the flower, and I dusted the edge of the Lip with some yellow petal dust.
On construction day I stacked my cakes and iced them using white chocolate ganache. I always use ganache under fondant because it gives a firmer base than buttercream. I also use acrylic cake disks to get the razor sharp edges. If you want to read more about the process, click HERE.
For the marbled tier I used Carma Massa Ticcino fondant. I refrigerate my cakes and live in a hot/humid environment so I need a fondant that won't sweat and sag when it hits 100 degree F temperatures, but sadly I've been told this fondant has been discontinued. Anyway, I made three shades of navy using Wilton's Royal Blue and a touch of Black. (The color came out a little too bright to be true Navy, so I might have to try Americolor's Navy Blue next time.) For the 10" base tier I need 800 grams of fondant so I marbled 700 grams of white with my 3 premixed shades of navy (100 g total of navy). I didn't combine the colors too much because I wanted the marbling to be sharp. I also put some gold accent lines where the darker navy lines met the white. I mixed gold luster dust with Everclean and painted on the lines with a very thin brush.
I stacked the tiers and added some white sugar pearls at the base of the top tier, and then I just added the branch of orchids to the cake. See, easy as cake. :-)
Happy Decorating,
Carol
