2D
Long Journey
by Valerie McDonald · submitted Jul 28, 2009 · 2009 contest
1 / 9
Description
It took me one day to make this cake. I worked on it all day, starting with baking. The cake is lemon flavoured, 3" deep single-layer, and 12" in diameter. I used two cake mixes. All buttercream icing except for the chain and anchor, which are gumpaste.
I tried using bake even strips on the cake pan for the first time and it did a great job of evening out my cake so I didn't have to cut any off to level it. Whoo! If anyone doesn't know what bake even strips are, they are strips of fabric you can buy that help the cake rise evenly when you wet them and pin them around the cake pan.
While the cake was cooling off I prepared my buttercream icing. When it was cool enough I covered the cake in a thin layer of icing and popped it in the fridge for about an hour and a half. I did that to keep the crumbs down. When that layer of icing was stiff enough I took the cake out and covered it in a clean layer of white buttercream icing.
After that, it was kind of experimental. I used a toothpick to lightly lay out where I wanted design elements to be. Then I painted some colour on the waves with food colouring. I used a very small round decorating tip to outline the waves.
After that I used a lot of different tips. Last year I got a kit full of cake decorating tips for my birthday and I tried a bunch of them for the first time on this cake. The shirt design has a very sketchy look, but I was having trouble drawing lines with the tiny round tip because it kept plugging up, so I decided to use a basketweave tip on the boat to emmulate the line-y look. The bottom of the boat is chocolate icing. I think it came out pretty cute.
I thought that the chain and anchor might make for a fun border so I removed them from the main design to use them there instead. I made them using gumpaste that I already had prepared from a previous decorating adventure and I painted them with edible silver glitter.
I also tried something new with the border at the base of the cake. I put streaks of blue food colouring in the decorating bag to give the shell border blue lines on the peaks of the shells. It worked okay. I was trying to make it match the wave theme.
In the end the cake came out pretty nice. I chose this T-shirt design, Long Journey, because I thought it looked pretty and I liked the fact that it avoided using black. (Black icing = yuck.) The lemon cake tastes good, and somehow I managed to avoid putting on a hugely thick layer of icing which is an awesome bonus. It was just right. Yum!
I tried using bake even strips on the cake pan for the first time and it did a great job of evening out my cake so I didn't have to cut any off to level it. Whoo! If anyone doesn't know what bake even strips are, they are strips of fabric you can buy that help the cake rise evenly when you wet them and pin them around the cake pan.
While the cake was cooling off I prepared my buttercream icing. When it was cool enough I covered the cake in a thin layer of icing and popped it in the fridge for about an hour and a half. I did that to keep the crumbs down. When that layer of icing was stiff enough I took the cake out and covered it in a clean layer of white buttercream icing.
After that, it was kind of experimental. I used a toothpick to lightly lay out where I wanted design elements to be. Then I painted some colour on the waves with food colouring. I used a very small round decorating tip to outline the waves.
After that I used a lot of different tips. Last year I got a kit full of cake decorating tips for my birthday and I tried a bunch of them for the first time on this cake. The shirt design has a very sketchy look, but I was having trouble drawing lines with the tiny round tip because it kept plugging up, so I decided to use a basketweave tip on the boat to emmulate the line-y look. The bottom of the boat is chocolate icing. I think it came out pretty cute.
I thought that the chain and anchor might make for a fun border so I removed them from the main design to use them there instead. I made them using gumpaste that I already had prepared from a previous decorating adventure and I painted them with edible silver glitter.
I also tried something new with the border at the base of the cake. I put streaks of blue food colouring in the decorating bag to give the shell border blue lines on the peaks of the shells. It worked okay. I was trying to make it match the wave theme.
In the end the cake came out pretty nice. I chose this T-shirt design, Long Journey, because I thought it looked pretty and I liked the fact that it avoided using black. (Black icing = yuck.) The lemon cake tastes good, and somehow I managed to avoid putting on a hugely thick layer of icing which is an awesome bonus. It was just right. Yum!