No recipe post today and not even strictly Gluten Free, but as I had such a HUGE response to the Plants vs Zombie cake I thought you would like to see a couple of new creations from this week.
The first picture above is the decorated Rich Fruit Cake with Marzipan and Fondant Icing. I had to create a 60th Birthday Cake for a friend of the family and surfing buddy of my Dad. He adores fruit cake and its one of my most favourite cakes too. Usually I like my fruit cakes to have a good 6-8 weeks to 'mature' but this one had 2 weeks so it was given several good 'feeds' of brandy to help it along.
The cake was then covered in Almond Paste (which I prefer to Marzipan) and then a thin overall layer of plain white rolled fondant icing. I would like to take credit for the design of this cake but sadly I am not in the least arty. I plug in my key words into the magic Google and hey presto pics appear. This design is not taken from a cake site.
I create all my coloured fondants in one hit. I cover my bench with cling film, grab my latex gloves and work backwards from lightest to darkest colours. In this instance I created the blue then the brown. I use gel colours to tint the fondant this allows you to get a good colour depth without wetting the fondant or it becoming sticky.
I split the cake into rough thirds and worked backwards from sky to sand. I created the Surfboards by cutting them in various shapes and heights from plain white fondant. I then hand painted them all using the gel colours and some food decorating colour pens. I have a selection of small paint brushes I use for my freeform painting. Once the boards were decorated I set aside to dry and harden.
I then used a small very sharp knife to cut freeform clouds out of white fondant and using stencils cut out the '60' and also set aside to dry and harden.
I was originally in two minds about how to approach the sand. The design I was copying from used coloured fondant but as I was in and out of my cake drawer I spied light brown sugar and wondered how good it would look as real 'sand' on the cake. So glad I did that now as it really lifts the whole thing.
I positioned the hardened boards against the wooden fence and then set to creating the little balls that formed the frame for the picture. I attached the fondant balls to the cake using a little eggwhite brushed around the edge.
I then used the light brown sugar to fill in the beach on the scene using a little painted on eggwhite to have it stick to the fondant. Now for the final touches. I stuck the clouds into the sky and the '60' onto the cloud and mixed up two colours of royal icing to pipe the palm trees and trunks. I used a small Wilton nozzle for the palm fronds called "grass" I think. Hey Presto - Complete'o.
Cake number two was my very first "paid" for creation. I was more than a little nervous making this cake. When you are taking someone's money for a cake you want it to look good, taste good and feel like it was worth their money. The cake was for a farewell from work function. The lady in question being a HUGE Cherry Ripe fan which for my non- Australian followers is obviously a choc-cherry chocolate bar.
The cake was a Double Chocolate, Cherry and Coconut Mud Cake coated in chocolate ganache. I surrounded the cake in cut to size Corinthian biscuits and made a bed of chopped Cherry Ripe for the top and completed the top with a fondant version of the Choccy Bar. I had to to freeform cut out the letters as my stencils were too large for the bar. I think it turned out not too bad.
Hope it inspires you to have a go yourself!
Lxx
No comments:
Post a Comment