Lately I haven't been decorating as much as I'd like. In fact, I hardly did any decorating all summer. I guess I figured that with two in school every day, I would have lots of time come fall to bake and decorate to my heart's content.
You know how when you think you have lots of time, that time suddenly gets eaten up by a huge monster and disappears before you know it? Yeah, that's what happened to me.
I did manage to try a new technique on this little cake last week. I was inspired by a picture of some fabric on some chairs in a magazine. Sadly, I cannot find it now to show you all. Basically, it was a multi-colored background with a white overlay. The white had various geometric shapes cut out of it revealing the colored background in a really cool way. I wanted to try to do that with cake.
Here is what I came up with.
This is a tall 6-inch round cake. I marbled together some fondant in different shades of blue, teal, purple, and pink and used that to cover the cake. Then I measured the circumference and height of the cake. I cut a piece of waxed paper exactly to size, stuck the waxed paper onto the rolled-out white fondant with some shortening, then cut around the edges of the waxed paper so I would have a piece of white fondant big enough to wrap around the cake. I then flipped the whole thing over so the fondant was on top and cut out all the shapes with an exacto knife. Finally, I applied a little bit of water to the fondant with a paint brush, then lifted the waxed paper up and used it to apply the fondant to the cake. Once the fondant was on, I removed the waxed paper.
This technique for applying a complicated fondant design to a cake was actually invented by Jessica of Jessicakesblog.blogspot.com. She is an amazing decorator and so innovative! Check out her much better explanation of the technique, along with a very helpful video, on her blog.
There are many things I like about this design - the graphic quality, the colors peaking through, the idea of it all - but I almost didn't show it to you all because I do not think I executed it well. Maybe you can learn from my mistakes too! First, I learned that I need to make the waxed paper and overlay fondant an inch longer than the circumference of the cake. I didn't do this and had a hard time bringing the ends together in the back. With the extra fondant, you can overlap the ends and make a nice cut with minimal interruption to the design.
I also learned that you need to hold that piece of waxed paper holding the fondant by the ends and the ends only when applying it to the cake. If you let go and hold by the middle, or let go to smooth anything out before all of it is applied, the whole thing will collapse and/or peel off of the waxed paper making a huge mess. It is also much easier to get straight lines at the top and the bottom if you just hold by the edges and hold the whole thing taut the whole time. You can see how the top edge of my white fondant is a little wonky because I didn't follow this little tip.
I am anxious to try again. The nice thing about making mistakes is that it is very easy to learn from them! It's more often the mistakes we make that make us better and not necessarily the successes. Am I right or am I right? :)
Thanks for stopping by and taking a look!
