Cake Decorating Ideas

For this cake, I just used a chocolate devils food cake as the base, cut & filled with a rich chocolate butter cream. To make my butter cream extra special, I used a good quality cocca powder. It makes the whole cake taste like your eating a block of chocolate (so my 80 year old grandma tells me!)

The corners of the cake were cut round, then the whole cake was covered in a thin layer of butter cream & placed in the fridge to firm up. Whilst it was firming, I tinted my fondant a brown colour. It was quite hard to achieve the correct colour, so it was just a matter of experiment, as it is a lot with cake decorating. Once I was happy with the colour, I rolled the fondant out very thinly, approx 2-3mm, using a small amount of corn starch down to prevent the fondant from sticking. Then I took my cake from the fridge & gently laid the fondant over the cake.

The best way to transfer the fondant to the cake is to roll the fondant up over the rolling pin then gently unroll over the cake. I then gently stretched the fondant out around the corners first & smoothed with the palms of my hands. To smooth the rest of the cake, I used a plastic cake smoother.

Next, I made the insert. This was done by using a small piece of the same fondant, which I cut to size then rolled over the real case to get the ostrich impression. Then I coloured it with petal dusts in brown, red, yellow & black. This was attached to the center of the cake with a small bit of water & finished with a sausage of the brown fondant.

The handle was moddled by hand & the stiching was done by using a dress makers pattern maker. The locks, hinges & feet were all made by using fondant. It was attached to the cake and colored with edible gold paint.

It probably would have been easier to make the pieces then cover with gold leaf, then attach to the cake! Once this was all done, I brushed the whole cake with cake decorators varnish (which is an edible varnish in which they use to coat M&M candies). This cake was made in honour of my grand father whose love, passion & work was to produce these beautiful cases. He sadly passed away in July & I made this cake for his funeral.

First Name: Belinda
City-State: Adeliade, South Australia