Saturday, January 14, 2012

Creative Project of 2012 #1 DUNZO!

Wow, does it feel good to say you're going to do something, and actually DO it.

One of my creative projects for January was "Try a new design on a friend's cake".

I set out to make a cake look like it had fresh full-bloomed roses stuck in it all over the place. How'd I do it? Do tell? Ok...here it goes...

I tinted homemade buttercream icing a nice shade of pink, put it into a piping bag with a large "star/shell" tip. I made 2 batches of buttercream icing. One to cover the cake first, the other for roses.

In both clockwise and counterclockwise motions, I started at the bottom of the cake, where I would later call "the back of the cake". In the middle of where I wanted each rose to go, I piped from the inside out in a circular motion, then lifting at the end of each, creating  a rose. The nice thing about this design is that you can overlap roses. It didn't have to be perfect as far as alignment or size, but I tried keeping them the same volume/size as much as possible. I made 2 rows up the side of the cake, then moved to the top where I started from the outside, working in. The center was sorta fun, I stacked the roses a bit, so one rose was the highest in the middle.

One thing I noticed is that my icing was a little on the dry side for this technique. Next time, I'll add more milk to make the frosting more silky and pliable.

Not only did I try the new rose design, but I made a homemade 4-layer white cake with lemon curd filling to top it with. This was my first attempt at both a homemade white cake and lemon curd. SUCCESS! And I found out that I really, really like lemon curd, too, (ruh-roh).

I wasn't sure what I liked better. The rose design, or the fluffy, yet moist white cake paired with the tangy and sweet lemon curd.

The cake made my birthday celebrating friend happy, everyone enjoyed it and I felt accomplished.

Piece of cake!

The finished product:


1 comment:

  1. Carol Girmscheid14/1/12

    Amazing Jess! I can almost "smell the roses"!!

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