Friday, January 15, 2010

Sophisticated Birthday Cake



My "Little Miss" turned two recently and this was the cake I made to mark the day.

I'm by no means a professional when it comes to making cakes, but I like to try my hand at it for the kids's birthdays or some special occasion.  I'll admit, that I've never taken a formal class, unless you count growing up in a house where your mom was hired to make wedding cakes on occasion.  I never actually took up a pastry bag under her guidance, but I do remember spending hours watching her create beautiful cakes.  I recall being amazed, but only in recent years, have I come to appreciate all the work that goes into making a cake as a work of art.

The other thing I must confess, is that I did not create the design of this cake completely from my head.  I have a few Wilton cake decorating books lying around for inspiration.  This is a cake inspired by two different Wilton cakes.

The first was a wedding cake in an old Wilton book.  It had several tiers with each layer frosted in yellow fondant.  The part that caught my eye and fascination, were the dozen or so delicate butterflies gently resting on the different tiers.  They were made of royal icing and were so delicate, they looked like they might just take flight.

The second cake was one I came across on the Wilton website recently.  What caught my eye, was how elegant it looked.  It was a two toned mauve cake with large roses filling the top to almost falling over the sides of the cake.  The bead work at the base was similar to the treatment I used and there was scroll work around the sides, which I admit was much more uniform and intricate compared to mine.

My goal was not to outright copy the designs, but to merge them and capture the feeling of the two.  I feel 98% happy with the results.  I find the picture in my head never quite matches the end result.  But the true test of the success of a cake, is how the child reacts.

My "Little Miss" is all girl.  She loves pink and dresses, hats, shoes, and purses.  She also happens to love butterflies.  So I chose to take a sophisticated approach to tie the loves together.

Thankfully, my girl had a wonderfully long nap the day I made this cake.  When she awoke I told her I had a surprise to show her.  Her reaction on seeing the cake was sheer delight.  She pointed and kept calling out her  word for butterfly.  Yes, that is really the true test of cake success.

The bonus was that when my husband came home later with the boys, they all kept crowding around it and looking with awe.  It's nice to hear appreciation.

Of course, all the time, I was thinking that I wished I could have gotten the base icing a little smoother and that the roses had been a little firmer/crisper.  I had hoped to fill the whole cake top with roses, but even with 27, it wasn't quite enough.  I should have taken another look at the scroll work on the original design, but at that point I was tired and had had about enough of making cake.  (There had been several small set backs in the process.)  I even lamented the fact that my butterfly was no where near as lacy and delicate as the ones I had seen in the book, but as I lost several trying to pick them up from the wax paper, I can't imagine how I could have made them any less then the result I got.

Yes, I'd say success is definitely sweet.  And so is my "Little Miss".

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