Last month, we had an Unbirthday Party for my mom's Domestic Science Club meeting. I made the cakes for the party, and once again learned a lot about the process. I chose sky blue and rose pink for the colors. One of the cakes was butter yellow, and the other was chocolate fudge. I did them in 6" round pans, which was a fun shape and size.
The biggest lesson learned during this session: don't finish fully-frozen cakes! I like to freeze my cakes to make it easier to work with them, but since these ones were thicker than usual they didn't defrost as quickly as 9" rounds. This means that I ended up with shrunken cakes the next day. Luckily, I had only covered them with a single layer of fondant since I hadn't had time to do the decoration, so I was able to salvage these ones.
The flowers were just strips of fondant, rolled and shaped along the way. I find that I always have less time for doing the finishing touches than I'd like. Maybe next time I will remember that and plan ahead! The white flower was my first attempt at working with gum paste, which was not at all what I expected. I have some more experimenting and research to do on that front.
