All ruffled up!

Well hello there, SnS friends!

From sporadic blog posts, and now here I am with a second post in a week! Look at me go!

I had meant to take a cake break after Lulu's and Christian's cake, but her sister-in-law came up and reminded me that she had mentioned my making a cake for her last month.  I hadn't heard from her after that but it turns out that the cake is for tomorrow! *LOL* I normally like to plan my cakes out a little bit more than that, but she just needed a small 6" cake just to present to the birthday girl for her 40th birthday so I said I would definitely find the time to make it.

Plus, I can't resist the opportunity to try out a few cake ideas that I've been seeing around the cake boards, the most idea being RUFFLES and fabric flowers.  I also thought it would be a good opportunity to practice for the bridal shower cake I have coming up next month too!

I sketched out the ideas floating around in my mind - and in all honesty, it pretty much resembled quite a few of the cakes I've seen around the boards - but with a few other things tossed in. 

I wanted to use different shades of purple/lavender and I figured I would make life easier for myself and make the ruffles and flowers ahead of time.  I made the ruffles and flowers using different shades of purple fondant mixed with tylose powder to give it a gumpaste texture and so that it would harden/set.

I had a bit of a hard time with ruffles as I was making them because they just looked funny and not nice to me.  A couple of times, I went back to my sketch book to figure out if I should change the cake idea I had in my head.  I would go back to the fondant mat and make a few more ruffles and flowers and not like them, but in the end, once I had enough, I started putting them together how I imagined they would be on the cake and it turns out that they look much better as a group!

I also loved that I was able to use my much neglected brooch molds I had made quite a while back and for added variety, I made some buttons sans mold.

It's funny how sometimes when you see something and you think, 'psssh, I can do that!'  I've been seeing these cool little wavy, criss-crossed indents in cakes to add decoration and texture to fondant and I was thinking how easy that would be to replicate.  I figured from the looks of it, that I could just take some string or embroidery floss and wrap it around the cake and give a gentle pull and it would create the lines I was imaging.  Of course it didn't actually turn out the way I had imagined it and it kind of caught me off guard so it took a little bit longer to arrive at the look I was going for. I found that I couldn't pull the ends of the string enough so that it would indent the cake on the ends that I was holding it without ripping through the fondant on the opposite side of the cake.  As I type, I'm realizing that I could have probably used a thicker string/rope and wrapped it all the way around the cake and then pressed them into the sides of the cake using a smoother.  See, each experience is a learning one! 

Another of COURSE for me is when you go into a project thinking that it's going to be pretty simple.  I wasn't worried or rushing about the cake because I figured it was pretty simple with the ruffles adding the extra fancy, but otherwise, it's pretty much a plain white cake.  So as I type, oooobviously that's not how it happened.  Sometimes, no matter how well you plan something, things just have a way of going the way they're going to go, am I right?

I've got the cake covered, I've had to take a flower kit knife and score the faint lines I'd made with the string which took longer than I had planned, but now all I need to do is clump my ruffles and flowers!  I took the three biggest "fabric" flowers and laid them on the cake stand to figure out where I would place them, grabbed a few other ruffles and flowers, added them to the side of the cake stand with the fabric flowers and as I was reaching for the piping gel to start getting my ruffle on, I knocked over the tupperware container with all the rest of the flowers and ruffles!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGH!!!!

I reached a decibel that I'm pretty sure only bats can pick up, but it was already 11:30 and here I am standing in the middle of my kitchen, surrounded by fondant ruffles and flowers all over the floor around my feet. *whimper*

Bart, ever the level-headed, calm, even-tempered man that he is, came and swept up the now garbage flowers and tossed them and then guided my temper tantrum-ing, whining, dramatic self back to the table.  He patted my head and made very nice, disagreeing noises when I wondered why in the world the universe was punishing me!  It was enough to placate me and finally, I was able to get it all out of my system and got down to business.  Mixed up some more shades of purple fondant and after a few false starts, was able to get some more ruffles made.

Granted not as fabulous and ruffle-y as the first ones, but they were made and there was enough to cover the cake!

Ta-daaaaaaaa!!!!

What do you think!?  And looky-look!  A ruffle-y cake stand for a ruffle-y cake!

In the end, ruffle meltdowns aside, I was happy with the way the cake turned out and if it wasn't so expensive, I would only ever cover my cakes with chocolate ganache.  I LOVE how smooth it gets!  Buttercream and I were always on rocky patches anyway, we were never going to work out.  Sorry, buttercream, you know, we can still be friends, right?

So that's it for cakes for me because I'm leaving on a jetplane to see Marti and Ann in Baltimore!!!  Actually, as of 8 hours ago, I thought that was it for cakes for me in May, but I got a message asking if I would make a jersey cake for the 26th and I'm considering it since I would just be getting back from the States and should be getting ready to leave for Cuba.  But you know, for as much drama as I have with cakes, I always feel like I'm up for the challenge!  I'll have to do some advance planning to make sure I've got everything covered and hopefully, I'll be able to say yes and tuck an Ovechkin jersey under my belt! Who is he, anyway? *LOL*

That's it for me, folks!  Thanks so much for stopping by and as always...

Stay Sweet,
Catherine