Daisy Cake

Well we got through Valentine's Day! Yay! Our Walgreen's presents were fabulous. I hope they have personal shoppers there every year.

Last night I decided to make a cake. I have been feeling tired lately and spending my down time on the couch watching mostly the Olympics, and that is not okay! I probably should have cleaned the house, but making a cake seemed like more fun. I wanted to try out a few new things. I am really not thrilled on how it turned out, but I learned what I think looks good and what doesn't. I wanted to make a yellow and white daisy cake, because I love daisy's and I love yellow! At the beginning I thought it was going to be another cake disaster though. I was mixing my white cake and somehow got my spatula caught in the beaters. It broke my new mixer I got for Christmas, sorry Dad!! I am hoping it will be covered in the warranty though. I got mad, said ugly things, and probably slung cake batter everywhere. I kept going. As I was pouring the batter in the pans I realized there were bits of metal and plastic in the batter. Then I was more mad. Luckily, I was concentrating on decorating tonight so I was only using a box mix. I threw everything in the sink and rinsed and started over.

I made 2 white cake layers, and one lemon cake layer. I made a lemon curd to put between the layers, and just a whipped cream frosting to put around the cake. Then I made a fondant to cover the cake. I added pictures of the decorating I did.

I make my own fondant. I find it is easier to use than the kind you buy, plus way less expensive. You start with about 16 oz of marshmallows. Put them in a microwave safe bowl.
You will microwave them for about 2 minutes. You will stop every 30 seconds to stir the fondant.

I couldn't take any more pictures for a minute because my hands were to messy! Next you completely cover your hands in Crisco. It's gross but your hands are super smooth for the next few days! Then you take 2 lbs of powdered sugar and knead it with your hands into the marshmallow. Be careful because the melted marshmallows are hot.

You keep working your hands through it until you come up with a tough, elastic consistency. Work it into a ball. I have a fondant pad now that I roll it out on, but before I bought one I just covered my glass top table with Crisco and rolled it out there. Yes it is a mess!!

Back to the cakes. I made three layers, 2 white and 1 lemon. I used a lemon curd in between the layers.

I covered it in a whipped cream frosting. I wanted to keep the flavors light, butter cream would be to heavy for this cake. When you are using fondant it does not need to be perfect. Just get it on there, it helps the fondant stick to the cake. Oh and the wine is Concannon Petite Sirah, I love this wine. I can only have a little when I am decorating because I forget to drink it and wasting wine is not allowed in my house!

Next you roll out the fondant then drape it over the cake. You will just pull the sides down and then cut the excess fondant around the cake.

Then it will look like this. And you have a flawless canvas to work with. I love it!

I wanted to try painting on my design with food coloring for two reasons. First because using food coloring to dye the fondant is tough, it takes a lot of kneading to work the color through. And Second, because I need to learn new things. I diluted food coloring with an artificial clear vanilla extract to make it easier to paint.

Yeah, not really a fan of the painting. I was hoping to have more vibrant colors. Next time I will die fondant and lay across to make stripes, it would be so much more appealing.

I used fondant cutters to cut out daisy's and place on the cake.

I finished painted and I was not thrilled. I know I could have make this look a lot better. But it was 12 am and I was getting tired, so I just decided to learn from my mistakes and do things different next time.

I was however so so so happy with my icing technique at the bottom! See I can learn from past mistakes (ugly Southwest cake!). I decided until I can figure out the perfect consistency I would buy the Wilton frosting that you can use to decorate. It was so much thicker than what I had been using. It made piping out the design so simple. So that added a little more character to the cake.

Corny is going to take the cake to work and serve it in his meeting (where I am sure there will be a lot of discussion of Kevin Smith!!). I will be waiting on feedback! I am going to try and make a special welcome back to California cake for Kim this week. We will see how Stella does with her procedure this week though. I will appreciate prayers on Thursday morning. Please pray they find the problem so we can all move on from this, and most importantly so Stella can finally feel good!