Happy Birthday Daisy! 生日快乐！幸福健康！心想事成！
It's Daisy's birthday, of course flower daises would be the main part of this cake. It is devil's food chocolate with apricots spread filling and buttercream coating. I don't want the daisy flowers over power the whole cake, but I want Daisy be the center of the cake. I am happy the way it turned out. I learned few things from the whole process.
Fondant:
I heard some classmates talked about homemade fondant with marshmallow. I searched online fount out Bunnywoman's MMF recipe (http://wilton.com/forums/textthread.cfm?catid=7&threadid=137). Instead of 7 cups of icing sugar, I only put 6 cups. I felt this was the right softness for me to knead. Since this was the first fondant cake I've ever made, I didn't know how to trim the excess off. In the end I trimmed too much, so there were many big gaps between white fondant and base. The original design for the yellow fondant piece would be more foldings and more weavy. Now I had to cover the gaps with yellow piece, so it looks more flattened on the cake. Then I made rope with buttercream around uncovered gaps, and put daisy flowers on.
Fondant daisy flower: I wanted to make different sizes of daises. But I only have one flower cutter. I didn't have time to shop around. I am glad that I have a genius handyman around. Victor made me two daisy petal cutter with Pepsi can. They work even better than the one I bought. I am so proud of him. Here is my way of daisy.
Roll out the fondant till almost see-through thinness. Use round cutter (your desired size) cut circles. Use Vic-petal cutter follow the clock: 3-9 clock and 12-6 clock, then cut between 12-3, 3-6, 6-9 and 9-12; remove the excess. Put the pre-flower on a foam, use the back of small brush, roll on each petal. Leave it on the flower holder to dry.
By accident I discovered how to make more realistic center piece using sifter. Take a small piece of yellow fondant (soy bean size). Roll it to a ball, then flatten it with fingers. Choose your desired size of sifter (depends on the size of your daisy). Dust well the sifter with icing sugar. Press the flatten fondant on the sifter, then lift it up, leave it dry.
Royal icing: I am glad I piped the wording with royal icing. Originally I planned to piping with buttercream icing. But I changed my mind on the spot. I am glad I did so. It's little bit harder to work on than buttercream. But it makes beautiful designs and it's flexible to work on. Through this practice, I learned a lot of royal icing and practiced my piping skills. Thanks Daisy gave me this chance.
Butterfly: Print out your desired butterfly pattern. Put a piece of wax paper on the pattern. Trace the butterfly line with royal icing. All lines have to be connected somehow. Put it on an angle board. Leave it dry over night. Very carefully pile off the wax paper. Then you have your royal icing butterfly. Always make more than you need. Royal icing is very delicate and very easy to break.
Over piping: I used double piping skill piped the wording with royal icing. It's called double piping, actually I piped much more than twice. I rolled out a piece of fondant, cut to square, leave it dry for couple hours. Then I piped the "Happy Birthday" on it. I piped 5 layers: first two layers piped with very light yellow, third and forth layers piped with yellow, the last layer piped with light yellow again. This way it looks more 3-dimentional. "Daisy" I did the same way: four layers of yellow, the last layer is white.
Life Is Good!
Life Is Sweet & Spicy!
No comments:
Post a Comment