3D
No Repeats!
by Liz Arsenault · submitted Aug 4, 2010 · 2010 contest
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Description
This cake was a mother-daughter collaboration over the long August weekend in Ontario, Canada. It was our first time doing a show-cake, or anything more complicated in the decorating department than piping "happy birthday" on the top of a sheet cake. I (Liz) chose the design "No Repeats!" first because I loved the idea of a strict little workshop where people carve snowflakes one by one, obeying this arbitrary rule, and also because I could see it translating into a cake quite well. I was also glad to see that this design had never been executed before, so we were free to explore how to handle the structural challenges without the allure of peeking at a previous attempt. Our goal was to translate the idea of the t-shirt into a delicious, and delicious-looking cake.
The base is a two-layer lemon pound cake, and the ice block is carved out of two layers of the remains of a failed (but delicious and fluffy) sweet chocolate cake, both made from scratch. The layers of the pound cake are held together with a buttercream dam around the circumference, with a berry jam filling. The decision to use jam was based on the fact that our supply of buttercream was dwindling, but the jam ended up tasting amazing. Everything is covered with 1/4" of marshmallow fondant. The figures are sculpted from gumpaste, painted with food colouring and vodka, and then detailed with a food marker. The snowflakes on their aprons are candy quinns. The floating snowflake is royal icing, secured into the cake with just two toothpicks.
The cakes were delicious. We included fragments of the failed chocolate cake with dessert two nights in a row over the weekend. The finished product is a wonderfully lemony pound cake, with the sweetness of the buttercream and fondant offset by the jam filling.
We would like to thank the pros who upload all the how-to cake decorating tips on youtube. Without the videos, we would have been in big trouble. We also have to thank our family for feeding us wonderful lunches and dinners over the weekend, even though the kitchen and dining room were completely hijacked by our baking and decorating adventure.
The base is a two-layer lemon pound cake, and the ice block is carved out of two layers of the remains of a failed (but delicious and fluffy) sweet chocolate cake, both made from scratch. The layers of the pound cake are held together with a buttercream dam around the circumference, with a berry jam filling. The decision to use jam was based on the fact that our supply of buttercream was dwindling, but the jam ended up tasting amazing. Everything is covered with 1/4" of marshmallow fondant. The figures are sculpted from gumpaste, painted with food colouring and vodka, and then detailed with a food marker. The snowflakes on their aprons are candy quinns. The floating snowflake is royal icing, secured into the cake with just two toothpicks.
The cakes were delicious. We included fragments of the failed chocolate cake with dessert two nights in a row over the weekend. The finished product is a wonderfully lemony pound cake, with the sweetness of the buttercream and fondant offset by the jam filling.
We would like to thank the pros who upload all the how-to cake decorating tips on youtube. Without the videos, we would have been in big trouble. We also have to thank our family for feeding us wonderful lunches and dinners over the weekend, even though the kitchen and dining room were completely hijacked by our baking and decorating adventure.
Baker’s site: www.lizprocrastinates.blogspot.com