Pink Princess Cake with Shooting Stars

This weeks cake was inspired by one my friend had seen and described to me. 

It's a very glittery pink princess cake! Yay! :) 

I started by making all the fun little details that would make this cake special.

Using gum paste (with very little 'Deep Pink' coloring) I made numerous pink daisies. I let them dry in small plastic spoons to give them a nice curve in the middle, as well as a few petals moving different directions to give them.a more natural look.

When they were dry, I dusted them with pearl dust and added a small gumpaste flower center (which was also dusted with pearl dust) 

Using the same pink gum paste, I made a pink bow for the front of the cake. 

Placing rolled-up paper towels into the centers of the bow loops helps it stay in shape and not collapse on itself while it's drying. 

After it was dry, I dusted it with hot pink disco dust. Absolutely Fabulous! Haha! :)

Because this cake was a 2nd b-day cake, and would be eaten by many toddlers, I decided to use lollipop sticks instead of wire to hold up my stars. I used white gum paste and cut out stars, placed one on each side of the stick and 'glued' them together with water. Then once they dried I dusted them with white pearl dust to give them a nice shimmery star look. 

 

Besides the pearls, name banner and letters, I was ready for the cake assembling to start. 

I baked a vanilla bean cake with real Madagascar Vanilla Beans (yummmm!!!) 

Banana cream filling (with a pink frosting barrier)

After everything was stacked and frosted it was time to start putting everything together. 

I used fondant to make the banner, letters, and pearls (dusting them all with white pearl dust). I added pearls to the top, bottom, and the places where the piping touches in the middle. I stuck all the flowers down with a little extra buttercream, and dusted the whole cake with the disco dust so it shimmered. 

I also added a silver and pink tiara, as well as a little wand on the front next to the bow. 

And to finish it off....the stars!!! I added 5 stars, all a little off center from each other.

I absolutely love how this cake came out!!! Super cute and girly! <3 always thankful for all these different, fun cake projects!

Lace Airbrushed Cake

I apologize for my lack of pictures this week. I try so hard to grab as many pictures as I can but this week I had some dental work done and was just not really motivated (or 'alert' enough to remember) to take pictures before I was finished. I am sorry for that! 

However we did learn how to work with the airbrush this week in class. It was very interesting! I am not an artist, so I was using it more as a tool for laying a base/accent color down on my cake. Not necessarily to 'paint' an image on the cake. I am not that talented sadly. 

But I did lay some lace over my simple 9x13 frosted with white buttercream. I decided to try to make a teal colored cake this week. So I mixed blue, white, and a little bit of green, to give me that nice bright teal color. I sprayed all over the cake before removing the lace, giving a more continuous look to the pattern. 

Then I placed a 'Happy Birthday' stencil over the top of the cake and sprayed black over it. It worked out pretty well! Way better (and FASTER!) than using icing for sure!

We also worked on making gum paste flowers today. They didn't have enough time to dry completely. However they were dry enough to place on the cake, just not dry enough to cover with petal or luster dust. So they stayed white. But that's fine. It looks great with this cake. The color is so bright that the simpler flowers are needed. 

I did make a few small leaves covered with petal dust (as you can see it didn't cover completely) to help complete my flower arrangement. 

The finishing touch was the simple pearl/circle border around the bottom to cover up any mistakes. 

It's definitely not perfect but I am pretty happy with it. I am giving it to my friend this week. It's not her birthday exactly...but soon. So why not celebrate early! :) 

Hearts & Flowers

Last night, being Valentine's Day, I wanted to bake and make something fun. So, I pulled out all of my leftover frosting from class last week and worked on some different types and shapes of flowers, as well as some heart cuz well...it's Valentine's Day :)

Buttercream Flowers

Ooohhh! I am so excited to share this with you this week! One of my favorite weeks so far (saying a lot since its only my 3rd cake class ever! Haha!).
I am extremely excited with the many color and size possibilities for these flowers. Can't wait to play with them more!

The first flower I learned was a simple 5 petal flower, which could be used for any flower from a wild rose to a small cherry/apple blossom. Very versatile!

The next flower (one of my personal favorites!) is the sweet pea. A very simple and small flower, which can be piped onto a rose nail or directly on the cake. I love this delicate, small flower. Could be beautiful all over a cake in various colors.

We learned two different methods to make the next flower, a daffodil. Both worked but the second method is my fav! I think it just looks a little more natural, it does require a little more finesse but it's worth it. We also used orange piping gel for the inside detail. I love these! Super cute for a springtime cake!

And now onto our regular roses. We are making our roses on rose sticks, which I originally thought would be harder than the nail but I was super impressed with look of the finished roses. The first rose was a rose I made after switching colors, giving me the ombré effect. The second rose was just my traditional rose. I know they need work! Lol! 

After those we moved onto daisies. I had a harder time with these, but there were two techniques and the second (resulting in a hippy style daisy) was the one that I gravitated towards. It was easy and produced a nice result.

After that we worked on some bachelor buttons, one of my favorite real flowers. They turned out well, but I think I would've liked them better if I had colored them more accurately.

Our final flowers were the VERY basic drop flowers. Pretty simple buy used often in cake decorating.