Stargazer Lily

Recently my brother's girlfriend Kirsten had her 25th birthday. I was excited to be able to make a cake for her and whip out my skills. I knew that her favorite flower was a stargazer lily, so of course I wanted to attempt to make one. But when my mom asked her what kind of cake she might like, she said, "I don't like chocolate, and I want a unicorn cake!" Hah, yes, she's a strange one. Since I wanted a fancy cake, and well, she wanted a unicorn, I compromised and found a way to incorporate the lily AND the unicorn. I came up with the idea to make a funfetti cake with lemon filling, stencil a unicorn on top, cover it with fondant, and then put the gumpaste lily on top. However, I ran out of time to make the fondant so I just slapped the lily on top (a little ghetto I know). BUT, I thought the flower came out nicely. I was going to make it all yellow but decided to tint in a little orange as well, so it kind of looks like a tiger lily, but whatevs! I was still proud. Enjoy!

The last two look almost identical but I couldn't choose. See the hidden unicorn?! :)

Let Them Eat Cake!

In a previous post, I talked about how my mother enrolled us in our local Wilton Cake Decorating classes for gumpaste and fondant back in January. You're technically supposed to start out at the basic class and work your way up, but obviously we didn't. But after having such a fun time in the gum paste class, we figured it might be a good idea to learn the basics because I tend to focus on the decorating and I don't have perfect skills with the basics! So we took the basic class and learned a TON of great tips, it was totally worth it! I learned how to bake a cake evenly so it doesn't come out with a domed top, how to make a really simple buttercream frosting, how to use all sorts of decorating tips, and how to frost a cake with ease. Here are some pictures of our final cake! (We also made a couple of cupcakes because the cake was being sent to my mom's work and the boys just HAD to have a taste of our work!)