Ombre Ruffles and Stylised Orchids

This post is all about how li'l old me's cake came to be featured in the fabulous Cake Central magazine.

Back in February, I received a very exciting email from Cake Central Magazine, asking if I would like to decorate a cake to appear in their magazine. If you use Cake Central too, you can find me here.

I has been an ambition since childhood, to have my work published in paper form, but, I never expected that my first printed work, would be a picture of one of my cakes..

Once I had agreed to the cake decorating task, I was sent the inspiration for my cake. You can see the inspiration picture on page 48 of the magazine. This is a hard part of the process for me, as I am  used to having free reign when making a cake, or just some outlines for what is required. Even harder, was that the inspiration picture I was given was mainly white!  I am not keen on working with white, mainly because I find it really difficult to photograph well and I was going to have to photograph the finished cake to send to the magazine. A little artistic licence and creativity was going to be required here.

The biggest challenge though, being a busy working mum and all that, was finding the time to make this cake. Fortunately, my lovely, kind and considerate husband took our son to his mothers one Saturday afternoon and this was my cake decorating window.

I had a few ideas of what I thought I would make and also flicked through some back issues of Cake Central, to remind myself of the sort of cakes that were usually featured. Flicking through the previous issues made me feel rather anxious and a little unworthy of this challenge. I knew I couldn't make a cake as formal and grand as those featured, even if I might have the skills, I simply didn't have the time.

As well as being inspired by the photo, I was also told, the cake had to feature an ombre or colour graduation effect. I settled on the cake design you see here, piped ruffles in royal icing, graduating in colour in spring time hues of zesty lemon and lime and set off with a little dark violet to make the other colours pop, hoping that this would be reasonably quick to decorate and eye-catching enough for the magazine.

I made up a big batch of royal icing and then played a little colouring roulette as I had to guess how much of each colour icing I was going to need to pipe on to each tier.

One of my aims for this year is to learn how to make sugar flowers and I started this design by crafting a large zesty green cymbidium orchid like those shown in the inspiration photo, intending to perch the orchid, at a jaunty angle, on the top of the cake. Having finished my ruffle piping, I gently set the orchid in place and it just didn't look right. Somehow looking too formal and out of place on this whimsically styled cake. I then set around making a dozen or so of more stylised mini orchids, which I think suit this cake a lot better.

The next day, I took my photos and sent them into the magazine. And then, sometime later, another lovely email arrives, telling me that my cake had been featured in the magazine and including a badge, which you can now see proudly displayed at the side of this page.

So, if you see this magazine, open it up and you'll see my cake! I have only seen it in electronic format, as I have not found the paper version of this magazine here in England, but I still feel rather proud.

That's all for today

Thanks for popping by and please call again soon

Keep up with my latest creations and inspirations in all these places

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www.flickr.com/photos/thesugarmice/
http://weheartit.com/Thesugarmice
My Cake Central Page

Swirly Champagne Sugar Cookie Cups

When I was making my Champagne Celebration Cookies I wanted to make something else that was small and stylish, a bit like a sweet canapé and came up with these little cookie cups. 

To make the Cookie Cups

I used the same champagne flavoured cookie dough I had made for the Vintage Brooch Cookies. One quantity of dough makes about 48 mini muffin sized cookie cups

Method

1. Spray or coat a mini muffin pan with some non stick baking spray.

2. Roll the cookie dough out about 1cm or a scant half an inch thick.

3. Use a fluted round cutter and gently push the cut out cookie dough into the mini muffin pan.

4. Bake at 180 C / 350 F for about 8 to 12 minutes

The best way I found to push the dough in was using the knuckle of my finger. You might have to experiment a bit to get the right sized cutter for your tin.

Royal Icing Swirls

Mix up a batch of your favourite royal icing, I like to use the Wilton Meringue Powder and simply follow the recipe that comes with the can. There is just something very luscious about the smell of this meringue powder, I can't quite decide what it is reminiscent of.

This simple swirl is piped using a medium sized star nozzle / tip. I used a Wilton 22. Hold the piping bag at 90 degrees to your work surface and pipe the swirl from the outside in, when you reach to top, stop squeezing and pull the bag up to get the point. Piping with royal icing is an absolute dream, especially when you are more used to buttercream.

Royal icing will dry hard over a few days, so making a swirl of this size might not be terribly pleasant to eat. If you are going to serve these within a day or so of piping, they will be fine, otherwise, stir in a teaspoon or so of glycerin to keep the icing soft. The glycerin will also give the icing an extra hit of silky smoothness.

Teeny Tiny Glittery Blossoms

Equipment

You will need:

Small amount of petal or gum paste
Lace embossing mat*
Peach lustre dust (I used sugarflair shimmering peach)
Edible Glitter (This is Edable Art Baby PInk**
Small blossom cutter (Mine from a Wilton Rose cutter set)
A little edible glue
A couple of small clean paintbrushes


*I used the sugarveil mantilla mat, just because that was what I happened to have handy. Sugarveil mats are quite expensive (though good value for their size). You can buy small pieces of mat from some suppliers now, or you can sometimes find squares on ebay.

** this is the latest advise from the Food Standards Agency in the UK re edible glitter. These blossoms can easily be removed before eating if you are concerned.

Method

1. Roll out the petal or gum paste really thin, just a couple of millimetres.
2. Roll it a little more on top of your embossing mat, carefully peel it off and turn it over
3. Cut out enough little blossoms for your cookies cups and a couple more for luck
4. Brush the blossoms with the lustre dust
5. Gently dab the blossoms with the edible glue being careful not to disturb the lustre and immediately dip another paintbrush into the edible glitter and carefully touch it on top

Thats is - you're done! Pop the blossoms on the swirls.

That's all for today

Thanks for popping by and please call again soon

Keep up with my latest creations and inspirations in all these places

www.facebook.com/thesugarmice

thesugarmice.tumblr.com

www.flickr.com/photos/thesugarmice/

http://weheartit.com/Thesugarmice

My Cake Central Page