Yesterday I attended the double height stack cake course at Cakes 4 Fun in Putney. There was a lot to fit in, in one day...cutting, crumb coating, covering and stacking... and that was before we even started on the decoration. To give the double height lower tier, it is actually two cakes on cake drums stacked on top of each other with dowels holding the weight of the top part of the tier.
Once the cake was covered and stacked it was on to the decoration. We made the butterflies using PME butterfly cutters and then left them to dry in a folded piece of cardboard so that it gives the appearance of flying! We also made the lovely rolled roses which look great and take a lot less time than proper sugar flowers.
Finally, it was on to the decorations on the sides. We used brush embroidery for the flowers and also had an opportunity to paint the darker flowers on. The finishing touch was to add the tendrils, these were added with an edible pen but these could also be painted on. When using an edible pen on icing, it is best to let the icing set for a while, hence the reason why there are two pictures at the top, one was taken yesterday and the second was taken today once the tendrils had been added.
This was a fun course with a very pretty cake as the result! There were loads of techniques to learn and it would have been nice to have even more time to really perfect our cakes.
