Cosmic Peacock

I chose this design because I wanted a challenge. I love challenges. That, and I love peacocks. It took me about 3 hours to make the cake, and about 4 hours to make the colors, pipe the design and fill it in.

The cake I made was two layers of genois, with a layer of daquais between. First I frosted the cake for a flat canvas. Then I mixed the colors. After looking at the design very closely I made two discoveries: there is a peach color in some places, and the orange red color I thought I was looking at was actually brown. It took about an hour to mix all the colors and match them to the design. There are actually two black colors: one is blueish black, the other is greenish black.

I used a toothpick to hand draw the outlines of the shapes in to the frosting. I thought that graphing might have worked, but it seamed easier to just do things freehand, so I did! After drawing with toothpick, I started coloring in the shapes. The tail of the peacock is interesting because there are some areas where the colors are layered, which actually became three dimensional. I filled in the peacock first, then the background.

After drawing and piping and filling everything in, I used one of the tree/leaf designs to cover the foil around the cake. I think this completes the cake nicely.

Once the cake was done I invited my friends over for Cake Night. I received compliments on the looks and the taste, and much happiness was had by all!