Week 39 Fondant Anniversary Cake

I was actually quite excited about this week's practical lesson. We had baked our fruit cake last week and this week we got to decorate it with fondant icing, royal icing and marzipan. I researched and googled for some examples that I would like to try. I decided to do something with flowers on it because I have never made flowers on a cake before. What flowers should I try? What colour cake do I want? hmm..... the flower will have to match the colour I choose for the cake.

Filling the gaps with marzipan

So after looking at so many pictures on the internet, I chose purple. Now, what purple flowers do I want to try that is not too time consuming and yet looks pretty. I don't have a lot of time to do decoration in class, so it has to be simple. I found one, it is hydrangea. It has different shades of purple and coincidently I have the cutter for the flower. Great! it is decided then.

Covering with a layer of marzipan

 We are required to do some decoration with royal icing too. So i decided to have the icing on the sides of the cake. I just hope I can do it because I haven't done much of royal icing before. 

So after covering the cake with marzipan, I covered it with another layer of light purple fondant. Then I coloured the balance of the fondant with 3 different shades of purple. Made the hydrangea flowers and let it dry on the egg carton to get the nice curve. After making about 25 of them, I thought it should be enough and maybe I should start decorating the cake with it. 

Then I was told that we have to use marzipan to make something. So I quickly started making roses. Oh! I also wanted to try to make some white lilies and so I did. Even though these flowers were not part of the design for my cake, it was still good practice to make them. 

Hydrangea flowers

Roses and white lilies

Marzipan roses

Now that the hydrangeas are dry, I can start to place them on the cake. I glued them on the cake with royal icing. Then I started with the royal icing piping on the sides. It was quite challenging to keep the hands steady. 

Almost done, now I hear we need a figurine! Oh no! What am I going to make? I don't want any figurine on my flower cake but I still had to make something. I quickly coloured the fondant green and a little with yellow and made a small dinosaur. She has big eyes and looks a little funny. hehehe..... Well I think she is quite cute and Andrew named her Dorothy. 

Small dinosaur

Hi, I am Dorothy

Yay! all done now. Royal icing done on the sides, flowers placed on the cake, figurines and marzipan roses done. Since I am not a fan of fruit cakes, I gave the cake to Rob and Julie, I know they like fruit cakes.  I just heard from them recently that they really liked the cake. I guess I better find the recipe and file it. I hope I remember the small changes to the recipe that I made. 

Purple Cake

Royal icing on the sides

Though I am very happy with the cake, I feel if I had more time, I could have made the flowers have more 3 dimension effect rather than lay flat on the cake. I think I need to practise more on royal icing piping. I read that the consistency of the royal icing as important as the piping skill. To give this cake a theme, I think it looks like an anniversary cake. So lets just say that it is.

Fondant Anniversary Cake