Monday, June 20, 2011

Taster Session Two-Tiered Wedding Cake

Tiare/jasmine flowers cake

Does this cake design look familiar? If yes, then you've probably heard about Peggy Porschen and her outstanding and elegant cakes and cookies. Although I learned about her only recently I instantly loved her work and what's there not to love ?! - the subtle pastel colours, the perfect flowers of all sizes and types - from tiny blossoms to majestic roses, the polka dots, ribbons and bows, the elegant finishing touches to all cakes and cookies - it's the cake decorator's heaven!

And after Sarah from Maison Cupcake blogged about how she attended a masterclass with the Peggy herself, I was already on the Peggy Porschen wave.

So when soon after I got my first wedding cake order, I couldn't think of anything better than inspiring myself from her designs.
I'd say the design is heavily inspired, but let's face it - it's a total ripoff.
Anyway I used slightly different flowers, which needed to represent the tiare flower, also known as Tahitian Gardenia. And some little jasmine flowers. It needs more practice to achieve them tough!

I am very excited about the cake and wanted to make a taster session to make sure the bride and groom will approve the taste, so I made a really tiny version of the cake. Or that's what I thoughts before the cake was eventually cut to 15 pieces ... that's enough to illustrate my math skills...

The taster session went well, some changes were made and the final design is not going to look like this, but I am happy I tried it; colouring fondant and sugar flower modelling is always such a fun!

A thing I learned about tiered cakes is called - dowel - supportive wooden sticks that are inserted in the lower tier and help support the upper tier. If you have ever wondered how the cake remains uncrushed - the answer is - dowels. Or bamboo sticks. These are very important as even the sponge and cream does not weigh much, when the second tier is covered with the fondant and the fondant or modelling paste decorations - it gets really heavy!

Another good point is the use of sugar in the cake - less sugar is best - provided the fondant (and fondant decorations) will be overly sweet anyway!

And the flower modelling can be really time consuming - worked two days on the flowers and they were still not enough!

tiare/jasmine flowers cake

Getting ready for the real thing in July! Wish me luck!

4 comments:

Unknown said...

That looks so sweet! I love it!

The one thing I would suggest next time is using a thicker board for the base, use one that's about 1cm thick (Dr Oetker ones in Sainsburys are thicker than own brand ones in other supermarkets) and then you can put ribbon around the base too which really finishes it off. Dot the ribbon into position with blob of royal icing at the back and pull tight.

The main thing I picked up from Peggy's class was that sugar paste is quite forgiving if you keep rubbing it to stroke over any stretching or bumps.

Good luck!

Made With Pink said...

Oh that looks amazing! I too reviewed Peggy's book recently and I've got that cake bookmarked as one of the ones I want to make. It's beautiful and you've done a fantastic job on yours! Good to find another Peggy fan!

Sneige said...

Thanks Sarah and for the tip too! I thought the thick board is for heavier cakes and because this one was supposed to be small I used the smaller board. II am going to use a thick board for the real cake, and I am going to follow your advice and think of decorating it!

Thank you, MadeWithPink! All of her designs are outstanding!

Xiaolu @ 6 Bittersweets said...

Wow great job!!

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