Dreamy Cake

While Lauren gave me 'spicy' presents, my friend Sarah, who started this whole word thing, gave me 'dreamy' presents; one of which was an instructional cake decorating book, Cakes to Dream On. While I figured  most of them were quite beyond me, I decided that if I used the shape of one and tried for the decorations of another, I just might have a chance.

Coconut lime butter cream frosting. YES!

I fell in love with one of the cakes decorated with gum paste flowers that look like they've been quilled. So on top of all the Sriracha things I made over the long weekend, I also decided to try my hands at making a dreamy cake. I immediately ordered some dowels and gum paste and spent a good chunk of Saturday dying gum paste and making flowers. By the time Siricha Sunday came around...TA DA!!

From Cakes to Dream On

No, I lie. That's the cake I tried to make, well the decorations anyway, that shape was well beyond me. Gum paste dries out freakishly quickly and I couldn't make the multi colored flowers because they'd dry before I got the next part done. Also I'd get sick of kneading color into the paste so I ended up with really pastel colors. I'm thinking I just need to set aside a big chunk of time to play with the gum paste.

What my quilled gum paste flowers actually looked like.

On to plan b! My friend Dunja gave me a fondant recipe that actually did not sound heinous so I decided to continue with the fondant plan and just decorate with it.

A fondant recipe that calls for honey-interesting

I have to say that I was pleased by the fondant even before tasting it. It was so smooth and pliant and I just knew it would be easy to use. I started with a pale green and separated it smaller amounts to darken the green. I figured if the quilled flowers were a failure, then I should go with shades of green fondant to emphasize the lime-yness of the frosting.

There was a lot of powdered sugar going on

What truly sucked was that because it was so unbearably hot, I had my floor fan in the kitchen, but I had to turn it off while working with the fondant. To make sure nothing sticks, you need to cover your work space with a lot of powdered sugar. And obviously I couldn't have a fan pointed at a table of loose powdered sugar!

Cutting out darker green fondant leaves

All in all I was pretty pleased with the cake when I finished. Sadly it's probably the best decorated cake I've ever managed to turn out. I really need to pick a skill, like gum paste, and sit down and work on it over and over until I've got it; rather than deciding willy nilly that I'm going to do it for a cake I'm making today.

Not too bad!

Recipes:
Coconut lime cake adapted from My Baking Addiction. Instead of cupcakes I used one each 8-inch, 6-inch, and 4-inch round pans. The recipe was enough for all of them.

Fondant:

• 50 grams of butter or margarine (Dunja told me margarine but I used butter-worked fine)
• 1 soup spoon of light colored honey
• half a bag of plain gelatin
• 30 ml hot water
• vanilla
• powdered sugar as needed

1. First dissolve the gelatin in water and set aside
2. Melt honey in a small sauce pan but be careful not to boil it
3. Once melted, remove from heat, add the butter, vanilla (or other flavor, I also used coconut), and gelatin
4. Add powdered sugar in small batches. Dunja said mix by hand but I cheated and used the bread hook on my Kitchen Aid. If you're mixing by hand, keep adding sugar until you get a pizza dough-like texture. If you're cheating like I did, add sugar and mix on low-medium until the fondant pulls away from the sides of the bowel and wraps around the hook.

The fondant was really easy to work with and, shockingly, not bad tasting! We didn't even remove it from the cake before eating!