My Final Cake Class

This is going to be a long one....

This was my final cake for the very last cake class. I'm SO happy with the way it turned out and still stunned that I could create something like this. The idea all started when we made these flowers in class:

I love these flowers! They're super easy to make using gumpaste and a flower cutter and then just layering the cutouts over a premade small ball of gumpaste. I knew that I wanted to do a garden theme for the cake using these flowers. We only had time to make 3 of them in class so I made the rest at home. I also made a couple different sized daisies to go on the cake.

We were asked to bring a fondant covered cake to the last class with an idea in mind of how we wanted to decorate it. I took it a bit further and had the grass done since I was nervous about doing it and wasn't sure how it would turn out.

I had to pace myself throughout the week to get this cake done. I baked and covered the cake board on day 1, made icing on day 2, made the flowers on day 3, stacked and iced on day 4, and then covered the cake in light blue fondant (twice) on day 5. 

I had to redo it because the first time it was really lumpy and tearing. I think it's partly due to the butter based icing i used to ice the cake. I think it was just too soft and the fondant just kind of slid around it. So, i pulled off the fondant (which pulled off all the icing it stuck to), re-iced the cake (very thinly), and recovered with fondant. It still wasn't perfect, but it was much better than before so I was happier with it.

For the grass effect on the cake board used a star tip (#16 or 18) and pressed it in at an angle all over a freshly fondant covered board. I found this effect on a website.

The grass along the side of the cake I was worried about and not quite sure how I'd approach. Most of the similar looking cakes I'd seen had individual strands of grass cut out and 'glued' (with water) to the fondant on the cake. I didn't totally like how they looked so I tried something different. 

I rolled out a strip of fondant and cut it to a long rectangle. I used a fondant cutter (basically a small, plastic, pizza wheel) and randomly cut grass strands in various directions. I then 'glued' the whole strip to the side of the cake. This was tricky and ended up tearing the strip on one side while I was trying to apply it to the cake. I could have used another pair of hands but hid the tear on the side of the cake and covered it with a flower. 

I LOVE the way this grass looks! It turned out perfect. 

I felt the cake wouldn't be complete without a few critters in the world so I made these little guys. They were super easy to make and I think they add a lot to the cake. I got the idea from this website: http://chiccookiekits.blogspot.com/2009/08/easy-fondant-bugs.html

All prepped and ready for class!

In the class I put everything together and made the clouds and sun. Looking back on this I probably should have used a styrofoam cake dummy. We never did end up eating the cake, it was too pretty to cut into. It just sat on our dining room table for a week until it started to sag, haha. Had I used styrofoam it probably would have lasted forever...

All in all, this cake probably took about 10 hours to make. This includes baking, making the icing, making flowers, etc. I'm sure it wouldn't take me as long the second time around, but I'm really glad I paced myself throughout the week!

What I learned:

• how to make a grass looking cakeboard
• how to make fondant grass
• how to make chrysanthemums and daisies out of gumpaste
• how to make bugs!

What I would do differently:

• use a more stable icing, probably a shortening based one
• use a styrofoam dummy instead of a cake
• make the clouds smaller and maybe have more of them
• make the clouds and sun 3D so they popped off the cake