Saturday, May 12, 2012

Starfish Cake and Henna Cake for the Royal Family Tea

Here are the cakes I did for the auction this weekend. I stayed up all night finishing them and then spent the whole day trekking around the Oakland Zoo with my favorite little guys, and boy am I tired now. I'm thinking I'm going to bed a little early tonight... =)

So I made my first cake with the theme of a starfish on the beach. The starfish and the shells are made of modeling chocolate, the sand is ground up Nilla Wafers, and the water is fondant and buttercream, with a glaze of green and blue food coloring thinned with water and applied like paint. I also used chocolate rocks, because, well, they're just fabulous!


My second cake was both more simple and more complex, if that even makes any sense. It's made with white fondant and a deep purple buttercream, applied in a unique henna pattern that I made up as I went along. I put the frosting in a homemade henna cone in order to get the fine detailing and found that it was WAY easier to use than an icing tip. After all, since that's already how I do actual henna, I figured it was worth a shot. And it worked quite well! So well in fact that I am definitely going to use henna cones for all my cake lettering and detailing.


Well, it was a lot of fun putting these together (that is, aside from the fact that fondant absolutely hates me and refuses to obey any of my commands - silly fondant!) and I am so happy with how they turned out. But now it's time for me to go to bed. Goodnight!

7 comments:

  1. absolutely beautiful! Who knew that your doodles in your high school years would lead to this :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hahaha, you remember those? How funny! And thank you so much! =)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Please share with me how did you make a starfish. My son has science party and he signed up to bring a cake.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No problem! I made the starfish out of white modelling chocolate, which you can google to find the recipe. It's just white chocolate and corn syrup, so that part is pretty easy to make, though do make sure that as you melt the chocolate you do it in small, small increments if you use a microwave, and that you stir often either way. So, you melt down the chocolate, add the light colored corn syrup and wait 4 hours for it to mold up. Then you have to knead it, a lot like clay, and shape it into whatever shape you like. It sounds easy, but it can get rather sticky and melty, so when that happens just pop it on a tray in the freezer and let it set back up before working on it again. Wash off any excess on your hands often when it melts on you, and make sure when you start working again that your hands are completely dry or it will seize up and will be ruined.

      Okay, so as for the shaping of it, I bought some ceramic tools at our local craft store because I didn't want to use the tools I had for clay for my baking, for obvious reasons. Haha! But in them there was a little loop made out of metal that was not quite a triangle nor a circle, but more of a combination of the two. After having formed the shape of the starfish by hand, I used the loop tool to dig out little ruts all over it. Then I used orange edible coloring powder on it, and picked all the tiny white balls out of the little colored sprinkles jars you can buy and put them on by hand, squishing them in as gently as possible, while still trying to make sure they stayed in place. And that's about it. If you have any other questions feel free to ask. Thanks for your interest in my cake - it's rather sweet of you! =D

      Delete
  4. WOW, again amazing I wouldn't even want to cut into it they are flawless!

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...