Baked a Cake

Earlier this month after delivering a pair of 1^st birthday cakes for two little girls and then headed off down the freeway to the Sydney Cake, Bake and Sweets Show to spend all my money catch up with lovely fellow cakers and learn some new skills. I learnt paneling techniques and figurine modeling with the fantastic Jacki of Blissfully Sweet and then made this beautiful watercolor cake with a stunning bouquet of water paper peonies and anemones under the guidance of Helena from Sweet Tiers. 

You may notice that as cake decorators, we almost always have a bottle of vodka on hand, and not just because the stresses of decorating often call for a stiff drink! Vodka can be a cakers best friend when it comes to hand painting cakes.  The high alcohol content in vodka allows for the alcohol to evaporate and the food colour (paint) to dry quickly.

We started the day by cutting out the wafer paper petals and assembling the flowers with piping gel. It was a little tricky making the wafer paper stick to itself and not to my fingers but once I got the hand of things I really enjoyed it. We painted the peony petals with light brush strokes, being careful not to add to much moisture – moisture causes wafer paper to completely disintegrate. Once our flowers were complete, we then started painting our cakes.

Starting with a mix of vodka and gel food colour we started adding strokes of colour to the fondant and then created a watercolour effect by blending with large brush and vodka. Everyone’s cakes looked beautiful in subtle shades of the rainbow.

This beautiful cake is sitting pride of place on top of our cabinet in the entry way – I love how our house is decorated with beautiful cakes, it certainly makes a nice talking piece when we have visitors.