Imaginative Dispostion, Creative Pleasures

Austin Cake Show results are in.

Well, the annual Austin cake show "That takes the cake" is officially behind me once again. It's always my busiest time of year as I spend months planning and then weeks creating my cakes for the show. This year my wedding cake didn't place, but I'm alright with that. It was stiff competition and I moved up to the Adult Intermediate category this year. However, my 'buttercream only' cake got first place again this year. That was fun.

Here are some pictures:

Here I am with the two cakes I entered this year.

Purple ribbon for 1st place.

The buttercream cake can only be decorated with buttercream icing. So everything on this cake is piped on. I used frozen transfers again this year which enables to me to get a lot of detail. There are 8 frozen transfers as well as piped mini roses.

This cake was entitles "Once Upon a Time".

Next, my wedding cake:

My wedding cake was entitled "Resplendent in Rose".

It took 41 hours to decorate.

It is definitely the most complicated cake I've ever decorated. The topper is a Victorian inspired hat with white and pale pink roses, a gold fabric flower with a pearl button center, and a feather on top. The entire thing is made of fondant except for the sugar pearls in the center of the fabric flower. I've been working on getting my rose petals very thin, and I'm super happy with them this year.
The first (top) tier is covered in the darkest pink fondant and then decorated with royal icing, two different colors, piped in a lacy pattern around the entire tier and then adorned with pale pink and ivory sugar pearls that were placed one by one with a pair of tweezers.
On the second tier I attempted to make the fondant look like fluffy fabric and between each segment are jewels made from fondant and lots of luster dust.
Following that, the middle tier is covered again with lots of lacy patterns and then cinched like a corset with a white patterned ribbon.
The forth layer has a ruffle pattern that I piped on with buttercream frosting, and then the last layer is a hexagon tier covered with over a hundred individual heart shaped pieces of pure white fondant that are shaped and ruffled to create a fabric skirt appearance along with more pink jewels.

I call it my dress cake. I wanted to give the impression of a dress without actually making it look like a dress. I still wanted it to look like cake. It didn't place at the show, but I rather like it. What do you think?

If you would like to see more pictures you can view all the pictures that my friend took for me at her website here: C's Photos of my cakes.

And if you would like to see all the winners at the cake show you can view them at this site: http://thattakesthecake.org/

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Also, I have been getting quite a few emails from friends wondering how I made that cake while having my 8 month old around and so I would like to thank Elin so very much for watching Nathaniel for many hours over the three week period that I spent decorating, including the 11 hours I put in the last two days before the show when she not only watched my son but encouraged me to finish my buttercream cake which I was planning on giving up on because I was too tired and Nathaniel had been sick and not sleeping at night and everything was crazy. So, thanks very much Elin!

And thanks to my husband who also put in lots of man hours each evening and weekend to help me out. Thanks honey! We don't have to worry about the cake show for another whole year...and by then we'll have a toddler. :)