Friday, April 18, 2008

Cakes for Tish

My new client Tish is a cake decorators dream. Not only has she preordered 12 cakes for the next year, but she has also given me a bit of artistic freedom to create what I want! After giving me the "themes" for each cake, she sweetly told me "I like to be surprised", and then allowed me to come up with the design on my own. What a rare opportunity, and how exciting!
This week she needed two cakes, and the themes were "Harry Potter" and "First Communion". Hmmmm. Those are pretty opposite from one another.
I don't know much about Harry Potter, except the basics from the first movie. Like, I know they went to Hogwarts and that Harry was in Dumbledore and that he was the captain for when they played the game with the Snitch. Beyond that, not so much. I ended up doing a bit of research on the web and found a great idea-First Year textbooks that students of Hogwarts would have studied. On the "reading list", there were the titles and the authors listed. Cool! So, as that as my jumping off point, I sculpted two text books, and then painted them with food coloring. When they were dry, I used something called Gold Highlighter-which is real edible gold-and dry dusted it on. I painted the book titles so that they appeared to be gold plated. I then sculpted the "Snitch" for the top-again with the gold highlighter and then added feathers for the wings. For the final touch, I made a bag for Bertie Bott's Beans, and then filled it with Jelly Belly Jelly Beans.
For her second cake, I wanted something almost porcelain looking. I settled on doing mixed shape tiers-the bottom square, then the top two round. To add texture, I used a special rolling pin to imprint swirls on the fondant that is draped over the top. I also wanted to make the cross stand out a bit, so I used tiny dots of royal icing to make a Swiss Dot design. The letters were done with specialty letter cutters that I bought at Cake Carousel. And then roses are ivory gumpaste, dusted with Cosmo luster dust.




I can't wait to see how her other cakes will turn out!

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