Pink Ombre Cake

 

So ombre cakes are all the rage right now. In case you're not a cake world groupie like myself, ombre is a fancy word for graduated color. So when it was time for me to make a 21st birthday cake for my sister-in-law, I knew it was time to experiment with some color. My sister-in-law is as crazy about this style as I am and is always sending me pictures of beautiful ombre cakes she finds on the internet. I had some leftover pink fondant from the first birthday cake that I made earlier this month so I decided to go with a pink theme. First thing that I needed to decide was the type of flower I wanted to put on the cake. Since my sister-in-law is turning the big twenty-one this year I wanted to make something soft, elegant and grown-up. I decided on dogwood flowers because they were big enough that I wouldn't have to make a hundred of them to cover the cake and have a nice elegant look to them.

I made four different shades of pink, from almost white to a nice medium pink. I mixed some white gumpaste into the pink fondant to make the colors and to help them dry so they wouldn't droop on the cake. I only have three flower forming cups so I made three flowers a night for four nights in a row. It really helped me focus on getting them just right! Next I baked up three paisley chocolate cakes and then I mixed up about 18 cups of frosting. Way too much frosting! But it is better to have too much than not enough - it is hard to duplicate a shade if you run out. I'm sure it would be impossible when dealing with a graduated color cake! I stacked the cakes and frosted them with buttercream, light at the top and dark on the bottom. Then I mixed up some of the layer icing to make sure the borders added to the ombre effect. Last but not least I attached the flowers, starting with the darkest and ending with the lightest on the bottom.

Then I took a whole bunch of pictures because I love this cake! One of the better ones I think I have done up to this point. I put my camera into color accent mode for this last picture to really show of the color of the icing as it gradually goes from light to dark. It turned out beautiful. Happy birthday Abi! You have become a beautiful young lady over all the years I have known you!

Peyton's First Birthday

Last Sunday I received a phone call from my husband's best friend's wife asking for a first birthday cake for their youngest daughter, Peyton. May seem like a little late planning at first but the real deal was that they had tried to contact a bakery to do the cake several times and the bakery never returned their phone calls. Bummer. But at least I got to do the cake! I hadn't done one in awhile so I was gunning to get creative. I baked two 12" by 18" cakes (one chocolate, one vanilla) and frosted the entire thing in BC frosting. Peyton's mom had sent me a photo of the napkins she had bought for the party and I pretty much took the design and transferred it to the cake. Kneaded up some MMF, colored it according to the design and cut it out into cute shapes to decorate the cake. Then I made a mini version with the birthday girl's name on it and presto - cake and smash cake for 60 first birthday party-goers done in less than a week! I was pretty impressed with the turnaround on it myself, especially for how large it was in the end. Coming up at the end of the month is my annual back-to-back sister birthday cakes - stay tuned!