Auctioned Off

Last week, I had the opportunity to make a cake for a pie auction at my church.  Every year, this auction is held to raise money for short term missions trips taken by the middle school and high school students.  Though the name is officially "pie auction," they auction off cakes as well and I was asked to contribute one of my cakes.  I haven't done a lot of cakes lately, so when I saw that I had the weekend free, I jumped at the chance!  Being able to design and decorate a big cake while supporting a good cause was the best!

I wanted this cake to represent fall a little bit without being too obviously fall in color or design.  I have been really drawn to geometric designs on cakes for awhile and lately have wanted to experiment with wafer paper, which is really hot right now.  I took this opportunity to do both!  I brought in the geometric element with the hexagons on the middle tier, and the wafer paper with the flowers.

The colors were a little bit fall while avoiding the typical browns and reds.  I love the browns and reds of fall, but just didn't want that for this cake.  So, I chose a navy blue (so hard to color!), gray, turquoise and bright orange for a little accent.  I really love the way these colors turned out!  They coordinate so well together and the orange is the perfect pop of color throughout.

I loved working with the wafer paper!  This is obviously a fantasy flower and doesn't correspond at all to any real flower.  I simply cut the wafer paper just like I would regular paper, cutting five equal tear-drop shapes for each flower.  I then cut a slit in the pointed end of each piece and overlapped the edges ever so slightly, sticking them together with a drop of water, so that each petal would be cupped a little bit.  I then used water very lightly again to attach all of the petals together and topped the center with a small ball of the orange fondant.  Each flower was attached to the edge of the cake with another ball of fondant and some water.

I really love the way this cake turned out!  The clean lines and geometric design are just what I love in cake design right now.  It perfectly represents me and my personal cake style!

Underneath the pretty covering are three different types of cakes.  The bottom tier (8-inches around) was dark chocolate cake with vanilla swiss meringue buttercream and dark chocolate ganache.  The middle tier (a tall 6-inch round) was vanilla cake with vanilla swiss meringue buttercream and white chocolate ganache.  The top tier (4-inches) was chai-spiced cake with vanilla swiss meringue buttercream and cinnamon which chocolate ganache.  I think the top tier cake was my favorite.  We all tasted the scraps from that one (I had nearly a whole layer left over) and agreed that it was one of the best I've ever made.  Yum!  I hope whomever won this cake enjoyed all the yummy flavors too!

This has been one of the most fun and most satisfying cakes to make.  It really is one of my favorites!  I am happy to say that I think it also was able to bring in a good amount for the missions at church too!  A win for all!

Thanks for stopping by and taking a look!  What is your favorite style in cake design?  What flavor is your favorite?

Geometric

Finally! Another cake! :)

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!