Happy Valentine's Day Cakes!

I did two cakes for our Valentine's dinner tonight. The first one is all chocolate with raspberry filling. White Marshmallow Fondant, Red Satin Ice Fondant, buttercream accent. 12 inch, 2 layer cake.


This one is a 8 inch one layer of white almond sour cream cake, the second one is chocolate, filled with chocolate chip frosting. Roses are duff style. Red Satin Ice Fondant. White Marshmallow fondant with buttercream accents and leaves. I painted the red on both cakes with luster dust.

Castle Cake Details

We took some more pictures at the shower of the cake, and you will notice that they added some red tulle around the bottom.

The bottom layer is all chocolate cake with chocolate frosting filling. The middle layer is White Almond Sour Cream Cake with Raspberry. The top tier is one layer of chocolate and one layer of WASC, with chocolate frosting filling.

I covered the cake with Buttercream icing and learned that if you want smooth frosting you really need to get SugarShack's DVD. The first batch of icing I didn't follow her directions on how to make the icing properly, I only used her recipe. I watched her demonstration on YouTube while I made the second batch...and the results was amazing. You could really see the difference between the two.

On Friday I frosted the layers with the Buttercream DVD close by listening to Sharon explain each step. This is certainly something I will have to get the hang of. I did have straighter sides, albeit a bit angled still. The frosting did get smooth, I just have to figure out how to use the paper step and keep from accidentally poking my finger in it!

Once I got them all finished we packed everything up in the car and headed to church to put it together. I pretty much understand how to get the tiers doweled and ready for to put the cake together. However what I didn't take in account for what how to actually get the cake onto the other cake. Needless to say I will need to learn how to do that without messing up the nice job I did on the buttercream icing. I had to spend sometime fixing it in a few places.

I piped the borders and prepared the towers - I needed to put dowels on the bottom of a few of them. Once those were ready, I put it all on the cake, piped the green leaves on, and put the roses on it. The only really problem I had was when I dropped one of the "cones" for the top of towers into the frosting. I tried to fix it and hoped nobody would look to closely!!

I cleaned up everything and then worried all night and the next morning about it all falling apart! Fortunately it was all in one piece when I got the shower and everyone was giving me a lot of compliments. My favorite was when someone (who is a cake decorator) asked me how I got the frosting sooo smooth. Thanks, Sharon, it's all because of her DVD. They took dozen of photos with the cake.

As I have had time to think about it, there are few things I wish I would have done. Mainly making a few more larger flowers (except on the towers, I like them just the way they were) and putting more decorations like swags or something decorative on the sides.

Overall I am pleased with how it turned out. The ladies who decorated used a bistro style table for the cake so it was a bit higher up, very striking, and did a great job with the extra touch of tulle and little decorations around it. Here are a few more pictures. Tomorrow I am doing two more cakes for our Valentines dinner, only because I had several extra layer left over from this cake. They have kept very nicely in the freezer.

Cake with Turret Missing on Right side. Fortunately I found it and not one person noticed it was missing when I got there before the Shower:Final Presentation with Missing Turret and Red Tulle:

Roses close up near door on front of the cake:
Overhead View:

Mickey And Minnie centerpiece, thought it was cute!

TA DA!

Here it is! I finished it at church today. I am tooooo tired to write much right now, so enjoy the pictures and I will post more tomorrow! And let you know how everyone liked it at the shower.

All ready for the shower tomorrow:



Back View of Castle Cake:



Close up of Front of Castle Cake:



Cake Set Up at the Fellowship Hall were the Bridal Shower for M. is.

Windows and Roses

Finished Roses with Luster Dust and few more extras. All done making fondant roses.



Today I piped white royal icing on the "windows" of each column/tower, each window, a door and roof peak, sprinkling them with cake sparkles. After that I place 3 flowers on each window and set them aside to dry.





Towers and windows with royal icing leaves.


Close up of roses on tower, roof peak, and window.

Castle Cake Preparations

I spent most of last week trying to figure out just how I was going to put together the castle cake for the bridal shower coming up this Saturday. Cake Central has several discussions in their forums on using the Wilton castle kit, most to say how much trouble they had with it. Two main things I learned were to put the cake together at the site, and secure the columns as best as possible.

After playing around with couple ideas for flowers I decided on making small fondant roses and rosebuds. After I am finished with them I will paint them with luster dust to give them a bit of shine and elegance.

This is what I have made so far:
I made a batch of royal icing and practiced piping it around the window on one of the columns and experimented with the edible glitter. I also wanted to make sure that the tiny rosebuds would stay secured to the columns. For the cake I will secure the roses with green colored royal icing. So far everything I have tried hasn't been to difficult and the roses seem to be holding to the columns just fine.

Practice Window: Royal Icing around "window" with edible glitter and 3 rosebuds.


Testing the royal icing on the columns:

Roses for Cake before Luster Dust: The roses have white cornstarch on them, once they are painted with the luster dust the cornstarch won't be seen.
Close-up of rose-buds on window:

Tomorrow I hope to get the flowers are painted, and start baking the cake layers.