Friday, January 7, 2011

It all comes together - the Cricut Cake cake!

If you remember, I said in my previous post that I had 3 days after the CCM arrived to make an amazing wedding style cake. I was pretty excited about it because it was my first attempt at anything like this. So, before I go into the decorations, let me give you a little background on this cake. My cousin called me and basically said that she wanted a cake for her parents surprise 25th anniversary party. It took me a while to figure out what I was going to do exactly because her initial explanation was a cake with the wedding colors "like Cake Boss would make" which (if you've seen the show) could mean anything! The wedding colors were pink and red which was hard for me to imagine looking anything but tacky. Part of the challenge I guess. I told her I was looking for an excuse to try out fancy formal cakes and she agreed. Mostly because I also said I'd make it as a gift to the couple I'm sure!

So, we agreed on one tier vanilla cake with strawberry filling and one tier chocolate cake and chocolate ganache. The biggest challenge I presented myself inside this cake was to make the filling myself! Usually, I'd use preserves but I wanted to see if I could do it myself. So I found a simple syrup recipe and used fresh strawberries. This made for a very stressful baker as I never knew what was happening inside my cake and had severe anxiety as I waited for the couple to cut the cake. But it turned out great! I had read that you need to crumb coat both layers of cake before adding filling to prevent the cake absorbing the filling. This was very necessary as my filling wasn't as thick as I would have liked. It worked out though, as the thinner filling just absorbed into the cake AFTER cutting and had delicious favor.

As I said, I iced the outside with a basic buttercream. I did a crumb coat then refrigerated to harden followed by another thin layer of buttercream. For me, I think this is the easiest way to get a nice, even coat on my cake. I then rolled out white MM fondant to cover each layer. I also colored & rolled out layers in both red and dark pink. I put them in the freezer while I worked on smoothing the cakes. I haven't yet mastered smoothing the base of the cake to perfection, so for this cake, I opted to use a red ribbon to hide my imperfections. This is the best way to solve cake problems! Ha ha!

So the CCM designs were much easier using my freezing technique and it took no time to cut out the decorations. I made two-toned flowers which I let dry on an upside-down egg crate to create a 3D shape. The only problem I had was that I'm used to making the designs a day ahead and then using moist paper towels and Tupperware to store until use. This didn't really work for these because they are more intricate and just got too wet and gooey. Not a big deal, because I just cut more out the day I put the cake together. Another lesson learned, CCM makes things easier so you can just cut, set on cake and go!

This is a close up of the designs I used. I thought the heart design was pretty cute. Then I saw it in real life and didn't like it but had basically run out of time to change my mind. Luckily the flowers really stole the show anyway because they were so cute. I love the swirl designs and I really wish I had focused on those a little more.

Here's a close up of the flower again and a little more of the ribbon.

You can pretty much tell from this picture that the wording was by far the hardest part of the process. I had the best luck when I rolled the fondant out a little thick and then used a very sharp little knife to help with the detailed parts. I'm sure this is something that will get easier as I go. I was still pretty happy with the way it turned out.

The finished product. Side note here: I did not see the topper before I made the cake. If I had, I would definitely have tried to incorporate some silver into the cake itself to help it match better. Still turned out pretty good for my first formal cake. I'm pretty impressed with myself!

No comments:

Post a Comment