A lovely cake for a lovely mum to be.
Vanilla sponge with vanilla buttercream and strawberry jam. Not quite a classic Victoria sponge cake with all the fondant extras, but close.
It was 6" square, so had 4 layers of cake to make it tall enough. I popped a dowel in the centre because the jam can make a tall cake very unstable.
I covered the cake with pink fondant around the sides and white on top. The edible print on top of that was of a couple of baby scans in heart shaped crops. I gave them a pink hue to match the cake a bit more.
The ruffles I did by cutting out big fluted edged circles with a standard scone style cutter and cutting out the middles leaving strips about 1.5" wide.
I thinned the edges with a ball tool, drew out the scalloped edges with a Dresden tool and pleated the ruffles as I put them on the sides.
I combined two kinds of fondant to do this; standard Renshaw because it's firm and holds it's shape well and Carma Massa Tincino because it's stretchy and doesn't break. I had tried with both in advance and found both flawed, but the combination of the two with a little tylo powder seemed to work well. The fact it was a dark colour doesn't help with consistency of course, if this was white it might be easier.
I knew that this was going to be time consuming (I've made ruffle effect handbags before), and I couldn't do it in advance on panels before I baked the cake without compromising the finish so I had to suck it up and work through the night to get it done and let it harden up enough to travel.
I used large headed pins to support the ruffles while they dried. I tried using cocktail sticks on my practice run but they left big holes! Of course you must be VERY careful that whatever you use can be easily spotted and removed before delivery!
I finished the cake off with a pink sugar orchid.
The feedback was very good I'm happy to say, but really I under charged for the hours of work involved and if I'm doing ruffles that delicate on a wedding cake it'd better be a dummy tier I can do in advance!
Meanwhile, happy customers all round and a lovely baby shower I'm glad to report. All the best to mum, baby girl and the whole family x
