Ruffled Wedding Cake

Most of the cakes we do are formulaic these days, at least it feels that way.  Do I sound bored?  Well, when most bridal cakes are white and include a monogram, diamond pattern, dots, and/or swirls it can get a little mundane.  I am grateful for those cakes, don't get me wrong.  They are my "bread and butter" and I don't have to stress or learn a new technique every week. 

However, I was super glad to add a new design element to a couple of old standards, RUFFLES!  Yes, fondant ruffles!  I really was surprised how easy they are to do, just a little time consuming.  Once you get a standard width and length, make a little template out of a cake box lid and cut away!  The most important piece of advice I can give you for these is to use Fondarific brand fondant.  It is just perfect for this application!  It won't crack or dry out while you are working on it.  I pinched a few pleats in each strip and then applied directly on a butter cream cake.  Keeping the slant the same all the way around was a little challenging, but next time I'll just make a little triangle template to double check myself as I go.  It shouldn't look uniform, so no worries :)

When all the ruffles where complete I airbrushed them with ultra silver/PGA mixture. The bride was very fashion oriented and a little flashy, but in a good way!  The other accents are all dark purple, which like brown, you have to be very careful with because the dark colored accents end up photographing more black than anything.  We delivered this cake to "The Mill" in Chattanooga, TN and it was a little dark there so I'm showing you pics that we took in the shop. 

As you can see we also had to include buttercream diamond pattern and scrolls piping. The original design came from some ladies in Las Vegas, but for the life of me I can't find their names.  I liked their design better because they used circles instead of diamonds but you can't have everything when it's not "your" cake.  I did get to make silver RUFFLES!  There were also luster dust stripes on the tier with the flower and on top of the bottom tier.  They just didn't show up on this picture very well.  I also had to make this butter cream cake with no borders to keep the clean look the bride wanted.

For those other cake people out there, do you try to encourage new and different designs?  The right salesman could talk a bride into a pink wedding dress, but that doesn't mean she will be happy after the when she sees the pictures. I don't want to push, but I DO try to encourage.  I have a "scrap book" that all my brides look through.  Since they have seen most of my cakes from the website by the time they meet with me, I try to show other ideas from cakes that I would really like to make or just caught my eye. 

I want to pull every cake with the regular formulaic designs out of the book so they'll stop picking them.  Is that wrong?  Cause I feel it coming :)