I was hired by my husband’s company to make cakes for their monthly employee appreciation lunches. It is a pretty good deal, they pay slightly more than they would pay Kroger, I bake a higher quality cake, and I get to experiement with decorations. It is a great learning experience. I saw a cake design on My Sweet and Saucy’s blog. Scroll down to the 4th and 7th pictures. The cake with the dots, yep that was my inspiration.
I knew mine wouldn’t be quite as nice since I was using cream cheese icing instead of fondant. I spent tons of time making the beads, even more time placing them on the cake. They had to go on individually. I kind of imagined being able to sprinkle them on and only having to place a few, but I was wrong. Normally when I send cakes to my husband’s work, he just takes them. Since this was a stacked cake, I didn’t trust it traveling in the car pre-stacked. I went with him before work this morning and stacked it there. The dowels I used to support the top layer were slightly too long, even though I had checked last night. When I set the top layer on, there was a huge gap! I fortunatelyhad icing along to cover the cake board, so I just left the tip off the bag and filled in the gap as best I could. Since the cake was cold, the icing wouldn’t really smooth out though.
The other problem is that I envisioned tall layers like my inspiration cake. Even with 6 layers, this cake doesn’t look as tall as the one I was copying. Even though I am disappointed, the cake still looks OK. I guess the amount of time I spent on it just doesn’t translate to how well it turned out. I didn’t want to take pictures, but, as my husband pointed out, this is all about learning how to improve and documenting my improvements.
Oh and if you are ever making beads or pearls for a cake, buy a silicon bead press or buy them pre-made. They aren’t difficult to make, but they are tedious. The presses are kind of pricey if you plan to do lots of wedding cakes, you will easily earn back the cost in time saved. The press can be purchased at Sweetart County Kitchen. Pre-made pearls in white can be purchased through Earlene’s Cakes. I’ll probably do a post in the next week on how to make the beads.
