Ribbon cake

My niece turned 18 this month and my sister asked if I would make the cake. I spent some time collecting different images of cakes I liked on Pinterest and then showed them to my sister who chose this one. I was a bit daunted initially, especially as the birthday fell right in the middle of the Easter holidays, meaning I would have to bake and decorate the cake with my two gorgeous but sometimes demanding kiddiwinks around. Call in the cavalry in the form of super dad Jase and my ever wonderful mum ...

Jase kept the kids amused (playing vintage games on the Xbox 360) while I baked four 9" vanilla sponges on Easter Monday. Having been looking for some time, I finally managed to find some perfect sandwich tins just two days before.

Sadly these Silverwood 9" loose base sandwich pans were one of the few things not in the 30% home event at our local department store but after to-ing and fro-ing I took the plunge and splurged out £20 for both of them, on the basis that they will last forever! It definitely made things easier, being able to mix and bake two sponges at a time, unlike Sophie's Moshi Monster cake which I mixed and baked each of the four layers separately.

I left these overnight and decorated the cake the next day. I filled between the sponge layers with some buttercream I coloured plum/purple (to match the ribbon going round the board) but kept the buttercream for the top and sides natural colour. I covered the cake and 12" board in one as I did for the Moshi Monster cake, but this time it didn't prove as easy. It was very warm that day and the white fondant got very soft and stuck to the rolling mat, so I had to scrape it all off, dust the mat with lots of icing sugar and start again. This time it worked fine but the icing sugar had dried out the fondant and made it crack slightly. Nothing serious but enough to niggle the perfectionist in me ...

I had bought some ready coloured fuchsia pink, sugar pink, green and purple fondant but hadn't been able to find any lime green, so I coloured my own using Wilton's leaf green gel and some primrose yellow. The resulting colour was just right, although I did mix up far too much. I'll be using that up in the next few cakes ...

Then the fun part ...

My Wilton fondant ribbon cutter came into its own with this cake. I bought this on holiday in Florida last year and have played with it a little before now, but this cake was meant for it!

I started with the thicker ribbons and chose to do these in the fuchsia pink and the lime green, laying these across the cake at right angles to each other. I then cut thinner ribbons in the lighter pink and darker green and placed these close to, but not touching, the thicker ribbons. I decided to make it random so thin ribbons were not all on the same side of the thick ones around the cake. I also didn't lay them right  across the top but cut them so that the middle didn't get too high with fondant ribbons. I then cut very thin purple ribbons and placed these in the gaps between the ribbons and glued a pink flowers to each of these ribbons.

I had previously mixed some CMC powder with some purple fondant to make it stronger and then cut strips which I rolled around a pencil. I removed these ribbon curls from the pencil once it had dried slightly and then left them to dry fully. I also made ribbon loops in each of the colours and placed a twisted piece of kitchen paper to keep the loops up while they dried. If I had had more time I would have made all of the loops at least three or four days before to harden fully, but ended up making them on the day and leaving them for an hour or so. This meant that there was a high casualty rate, but Sophie and Justin were more than happy to take care of these ...

I then started putting the top bow decoration together, randomly placing the ribbon loops and, when happy with the look, fixing them down with some white royal icing. We had bought a cake fountain candle that formed the centre of the ribbon and which was truly spectacular when lit, something like the image below. This proved useful, as I don't know how I would have finished off the top of the bow! I also added some ribbons in two places at the side of the cake, which looked pretty.

I finished off the cake with some edible jelly diamonds, placing one in each of the pink flowers and "scattering" others in the top bow and side ribbons, then the obligatory sprinkling of edible glitter.

For a cake I was initially daunted by, I think it came out beautifully and more importantly my niece loved it.

Happy 18th birthday Amy.

PS We all contributed to getting her a Kitchen Aid for her present so I am looking forward to her starting her own blog with all her wonderful creations. Go Amy go ...

© 2012 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.

Minnie Mouse birthday cake

Suffering from cake making withdrawal symptoms, I recently volunteered to make a Minnie Mouse themed cake for my friend's daughter's third birthday. Having searched the web for inspiration, I e-mailed her a selection of ideas and was very pleased when she came back wanting the same cake as I wanted to make!

Rather than making a Minnie Mouse face, I opted for a round cake with a Minnie Mouse black hat with ears (see here for original inspiration cake). 

I covered the cake board with white fondant icing and cut out small circles of pink icing (using the bottom of a small icing nozzle) which I randomly placed on the board and flattened with a rolling pin and added a pink ribbon around the board.

I baked a 9.5" round cake and dome cake (in a small pyrex bowl). I trimmed the top off the dome cake to level it and covered the large cake in pink and the dome cake in black. For some reason, both cakes developed air bubbles under the icing (I have never experienced this before) but I "popped" these using a needle inserted at an angle (this makes the hole less noticeable). I then added circles of white fondant to the pink cake for Minnie's spots. I added a pink fondant ribbon edge to the black hat to tidy the join with the main cake.

The ears were tricky. I rolled even balls of black fondant, mixed with some gum tragacanth (this makes the fondant stronger and more pliable) and flattened them with my icing smoother into circles. I then flattened one edge and curved the whole ear. Keeping the curve while the fondant dried was the hardest part but I ended up creating domes in tin foil and lining with greaseproof paper to dry the ears in. If I was to do this again, I would try to allow more time for the ears to dry (I was limited this time to two days) and I would smooth the foil cup, as some of the creases from the foil transferred to the back of the ear! I then fixed these ears to the hat using bamboo skewers (I always try to remember to tell people that I have used these and that they are inedible!).

This was also the first time I had a go at making a fondant bow; I did a little research on the web and was really pleased with the end result. I cut out two even rectangles, placed a piece of tissue paper in the middle of each and folded the rectangles in half over the tissue. I then "gathered" the straight flat edges and placed the two loops of the ribbon together and stood the bow up. Another smaller rectangle was wrapped around the join. The tissue is used to help keep the fullness of the bow until the fondant dries and then gets taken out (cotton wool balls or a roll of kitchen paper can also be used). I added white fondant circles and stitch marks to the middle wrap around.

Finally, I cut out a fondant 3 in pink for the hat and the little girl's name in black. I struggled so much with the letter cutters and still need lots more practice with them. I think I need to add lots more gum tragacanth to the fondant when using for letters and allow it to improve for a few days before using it where time permits. Plenty of lustre dust and the cake was finished. 

Overall I was pleased with the cake and I have learned various new skills and techniques that I can use on this or similar cake again.

© 2011 Nicola Noble

Christening cake

I have just finished my first christening cake and, even better, someone is going to pay me for it! I played around with various ideas from a teddy bears' picnic to a train on a track and settled on some toy toppers - a teddy bear, a train and some building blocks. The colour theme was blue and purple on white. I used purple to add some contrast so that it wasn't too wishy-washy with just pale blue.

I made the teddy in the same way as for my recent teddy bears' picnic cupcakes, but instead of flower paws I added purple stars to coordinate him with the other toppers.

The train proved a little harder - I really wasn't happy with my first attempt but then found a great shape thanks to The Cake Journal. The only thing I changed was using fondant buttons for the wheels (the client really liked this detail)

The building blocks were much harder. I started off making them too big and had to cut them right down in size. It was hard to get a cube shape but I persevered using my cake smoother and the flat surface of the work mat until they looked reasonable. It was also quite hard getting them all the same size. I have some letter embossers so used these to add some detail. If I was to do these again, I would decide on the arrangement of the blocks first and then imprint the letters as I found that, since I randomly imprinted the letters, they weren't facing the right way once put together. I was able to cover this "mistake" by making one side of each block purple and adding a blue star. This also helped coordinate the blocks with the other toppers so it worked out okay in the end.

I finished off the toppers with some lustre. I mixed snowflake lustre dust with a little bit of vodka and painted it onto the purple and black elements of the toppers. Doing it this way makes the lustre more intense than just brushing the dust onto the fondant. The vodka evaporates which means the fondant doesn't get soggy.

The cake was a 9.5" victoria sponge with lemon zest and lemon buttercream. My two tins were slightly mismatched so I had to do a little cutting to balance the outer edges of the two layers and a little levelling on the tops of the sponges to make the cake flat. My last decorated sponge had a middle bulge showing through the fondant icing but with research I realised that the buttercream had been too soft so this time I made the buttercream reasonably firm for the middle and then softened it with more lemon juice to dirty coat the sides and top (dirty coat is a thin layer of buttercream that "traps" the crumbs). I put the cake in the fridge while I did the school pickup and later added a thicker layer of buttercream to the top and sides (no crumbs to fight with on this layer!) and then covered the cake in white fondant.

The cake was placed off-centre on a board so the name could be placed at the front of the board. I had covered this with white fondant last week (to allow it to harden so that it didn't mark when the cake was put on) and glued a blue ribbon to the edge of the cake board.

I recently watched a tutorial on YouTube where the person used a pastry/pizza cutter to trim the excess fondant so I thought I'd give this a go. I can see with some practice that this will work very well and for a first attempt it wasn't too bad - just a little high in a couple of places. I covered these slight uneven edges with a blue fondant ribbon.

The fondant ribbon was hard to do. I bought a Wilton ribbon cutter when I was in the States recently and I think it will take a bit of practice for this too. The "cutters" don't cut as cleanly as I would like but overall it gives a nice effect. The only really hard thing was rolling a piece of fondant long enough to go round the whole cake in one piece and keeping a consistent thickness along the length. It took about three attempts but I got there ...

Finally, to finish the cake I added the little boy's name. I used this as an excuse to buy some letter cutters. Again these are going to take some practice but I think that they turned out well. They are slightly bigger than I was expecting but I think they look good on this cake.

All that is left to do now for the Christening is to make some cupcakes with blue and purple buttercream swirls.

© 2011 Nicola Noble