I am a cake and wedding nerd! I love to look at books, videos, photos etc. of gorgeous cakes. I love making cakes for family, friends and clients. One day I was watching videos on YouTube on decorating with royal icing to practice string work. I came across a master cake artist from the UK and some of his, no, not some, ALL of his cakes are stunning! One cake was so gorgeous that it brought me to tears literally. His name is David MacCarfrae and I was inspired by a photo of one of his cakes. Lucky for me, my favorite aunt’s birthday was just 2 days away and I always make her a cake (light bulb going off…HERE).
I thought I’d try my hand at some of his techniques. I had taken one class on cake decorating about 5 years ago and his work has inspired me to want to go and learn the rest of the stuff I need to learn. I made the roses out of homemade marshmallow fondant. I tinted blobs of fondant as I needed to make new roses. I did a pale yellow, lavender, soft sage green, tan, ivory and pink. I went back with a small artist brush and tinted the edges of some of the roses a little bit darker using the same food coloring and a little bit of extract flavoring just to give the roses more definition of color.
I had used 2 8″ round chocolate cakes made from scratch with homemade icing that I flavored Bavarian Cream. I tinted the icing the colors I needed with the emphasis on tan so that the roses would pop more. I changed tips from a shell tip 16, 18 and 21 to rose tip 102 and then a piping tip # 4 and # 3. I did the top border in a circular shell border that I did in white with tip # 21, then when over it in sage green with tip # 18 and then over it again with tan in tip # 3. I did swags on the side and hearts with a scroll design around the sides and then arranged my flowers. I used a leaf tip and Kelly green icing color for the leafs.
Tonight is my aunt’s birthday and I hope she loves this cake as much as I do. I worked on this cake for about 9 hours. I’m exhausted, but oh my gosh, it was fun!!!
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