Mum and I have recently starting going to some craft nights making cards with a great lady called Bev who works as a consultant for Close to my heart, it has been a great way to get out of the house for both of us and also a great way to meet some more people local to us. Anyhow a couple of Fridays ago mum and I hosted a party at her house for the same thing and I decided to make a cake, mainly because it seems lately every time I go anywhere I have to make a cake I look at is as practise but I also just really enjoy it.
I was trolling through Facebook one day and came across this video and I thought that it looked really effective and shouldn't be too difficult to reproduce. I think under normal circumstances this would be true but of course on the day I decided to make the cake it was 30 bloody degrees and of course just like me the butter cream was melting so useless for piping.
But starting at the start I made a chocolate cake as I know most people like chocolate cake and it's only werido's like me who don't, so chocolate cake it was
I used my trusty old devils food cake with chocolate butter cream for the crumb coating.
I made up about 4 lots of butter cream and coloured them and filled all my piping bags which I had already with my piping tips, including the Wilton 789 for the crumb coating and top layer. I used Wilton 104 to make the Roses, Wilton 352 for the leaves and just a generic basket weave and a generic round tip to start the roses, and a Wilton 1M for the purple flowers and also for the plan B roses. And of course as you can see in the photo my brand new Wilton Flower Lifter, I did have one of these years ago but with all the moving I lost it I was so excited when I ordered my new one.
First step after the crumb coating had set was to do the top layer, I noticed on the video above they actually used 2 different colours for the top coat, The cream foe the top and for around the side they used the same colour that they did the basket weave, but I didn't have time to do that so I just used the one colour, however hindsight I can see the difference it makes using the same colour and it looks much better. Never mind.
After my top coat I used my generic basket weave piping tip to pipe the weave, firstly I spaced out how many horizontal strips I would need to make then I piped starting from the very top every second line (3 in total) then I piped a vertical line at the end of my first strips, then I piped from the middle of my first strips over the top of the vertical line on the odd strips (3 in total) and then another vertical line, rinse and repeat. As you can see from the photo below, had I done the top coat in brown the holes wouldn't be so obviously.
Today was an incredibly hot day even with my air conditioning on full fan 16 degrees so I put the cake in fridge to stay cool while I piped my roses, I had piped roses before so I had expected this to be no problem and to just quickly make all the roses I needed, boy was I wrong I hadn't taken the heat into consideration and although I had no problem with the first rose the subsequent roses literally melted while I was piping and completely smushed together when I tried to move them from the rose nail to the cake. After an hour and a half, I am not kidding you, I still only had 2 roses so I made a plan B and used the Wilton 1M to pipe swirl roses.
The heat was not done with me yet, When I tried to pipe the Leaves ad the wee purple flowers the butter cream in my piping bag did not want to stick to the top coat of the cake as much as I pressed down consequently the wee purple flowers did get squashed and the leaves are quite right either, I am determined to make this cake again but I will try in the dead of winter I think.
Although as I saw it was full of mistakes with my critical eye the ladies at the party were amazed and loved the cake so I call it a success for Summer. But check back with me next year when I try again in winter and then I will do side by side comparisons.
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