Rose Column Wedding Cake

We made a cake recently that the bride wanted the top tier to float on top of flowers. That's a nice way of saying that she wanted a 2" space in between the tiers. In the olden days, seeing white plastic columns was expected, but today it's considered tacky or old fashioned. I have found that the "hidden pillar" system from Wilton is great for this application (only one or two tier separated at the most.). You will need to buy a plastic plate that has stubs on the underside. I hot glue my cake board to the plastic board and flip the cake upside to cover the plastic edge with buttercream. In almost all instances, you want to use a ribbon border to hide the Union of the two boards.

You can still see the columns here

The next teams you need is a set of "hidden pillars". After you put one in you can measure the height of the space you will need. Mark it, remove it and cut the rest all the same height. Learn from me, if your cake is less than 8" in size, install all the pillars BEFORE you decorate the cake. They are so big and can displace so much cake that you might have a blowout. We had that happen at the venue one time. The cake was completely covered in piping and it was hard to fix. Lesson learned.

Extra petals will make the columns disappear

A few more helpful hints for these types of cakes. To transfer the cake that is hot glued to the plate, before you add the cake find a piece of styrofoam (a 1" tall disc that is a couple inches bigger than the cake) works well. Make sure you have plenty of flowers and preferably different sizes. This cake had over two dozen roses. Install all or most of the flowers before you put the next tier on. Also before you install that tier, glue (with buttercream) a few rose petals to the plastic pillars. You have to sacrifice a rose but I means that none of the plastic will be seen. After you install your next tier, you will need use some of those sacrificial petals to fill in black holes. Just fold them and insert them or put on top of flowers to make them bigger. You can really see the difference in the pictures where I've added extra petals.

As an added bonus here is a topper tip. If you need a toppers stub to be longer (always when they are 1" long) then floral tape some skewers to them. It will make it more secure. If you have long stubs but need the topper to NOT sink down (like this one that needs to float above the flowers) we hid a straw under the topper and then his it with flower petals glued with buttercream to a straw. Ha! I'm a wizard!

Super Bling Diamond Wedding Cake

Earlier this spring, I met with a very girly-girl bride named Kassi.  She had a lot of ideas but her main inspiration was a page from a David Tutera book.  There was one wedding in particular that she really loved and wanted to model her entire wedding after it.The cake pictured in the book was perfection to her and she didn't want to change a thing about it.  Who am I to argue?


So with the cake design already decided, she then chose cake and filling to match the outside of the cake.  It was white cake with VERY pink strawberry buttercream. She wanted the inside of the cake to be just as pretty as the outside.  Isn't that cute?

The cake, as you can see, is fairly simple, so the cake only cost the base price; there were no additonal charges for "art fees".  However, the bling and those mini diamonds were not cheap!  I used 7 yards of 4-row rhinestones at $24 dollars/yard.  That's $168 dollars!!  I got them at Bead and Trim, not only because they were the cheapest, but I have dealt with them in the past and been very pleased with their customer service.  I got the diamonds at Diamond Party Confetti and Hobby Lobby.

We made a very pale pink vanilla buttercream for the outside of the cake and then carefully started placing the rhinestone strips on the cake, making sure not to squish the icing into the rhinestones and then piped the dots.  As it became room temperature, the top border of rhinestones began to scare me a little.  I was afraid that they were so heavy that they might start to slide down the cake.  I added several 2-inch pieces of floral wire in between the rhinestones around the cake just to make sure there was plenty of support.  Better safe than sorry, right?

The best part of this cake was during the delivery to the Grandview.  Several guests were already there and many of them commented that the cake "looked just like Kassi".  I thought that was one of the best compliments a baker could get!

For the record, the pages I got from Tutera's book did not credit the original cake designer.  If someone knows, please leave me a comment and I will give proper credit.

Diamond Monogram Wedding Cake

If not for the small fondant circle and the pearl dragees, this wedding cake would be 100% buttercream.

While this is essentially a very basic, albeit elegant wedding cake, it probably took me longer than any cake I did that week.  I did begin by using an impression mat to mark my diamonds on the cake, but then it was out with the spatula and the blowtorch to cut each line into the cake.  After that was done, a small pearl dragee was placed at each intersecting line.

So far, I am loving the buttercream Fondarific.  It works well as fondant, works fabulously in my Cricut Cake machine, and matches my buttercream perfectly.  In this case, I cut a circle from that Fondarific and used a small sculpting knife to trace over the "M", creating a faint impression.  Then I piped layers of buttercream to build up the monogram.

As always, thanks for stopping by and listening to me ramble on about cake and have a great weekend!!