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| "cheery pastels" Rainbow & Hot Air Balloons cake* |
The top tier of the cake is the ever-popular 3-layer Devil's chocolate food cake, filled with chocolate French buttercream. The bottom tier is a 7-layer pastel rainbow vanilla butter cake, filled with luscious vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. Because the birthday boy's mummy didn't want the rainbow tier to be too high, each coloured layer was baked a little thinner, so that the overall height of the cake matched the height of the chocolate tier.
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| Rainbow & Hot Air Balloon Dessert Table* |
Because the cake is to be featured on Sugarena's rainbow-themed dessert table, it had to match the backdrop, colours, hot air balloons, clouds and all. First, I kneaded concentrated food colour gel paste into some white fondant to get the "cheery pastels". Lots of arm power! My arms were definitely sore afterwards, especially after kneading the lighter blue fondant for the cake's background!
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| rainbow on top of the cake |
Because the rainbow topper, the hot air balloons and clouds needed to stand, I had to make them first to make sure they dried nice and hard. For the rainbow, I made long snakes out of each colour. When they were about the right thickness, I rolled a fondant smoother over the snakes to smoothen them out. If you only use your fingers, you will get a few areas that aren't the same thickness due to the bumps on your fingers and these will show once the whole rainbow is put together. So, if you have a fondant smoother, it's better to take this extra step to smoothen out the snakes.
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| fondant rainbow topper |
Using a circle cutter (or anything round) that's a good size relative to the size of your cake, drape the snakes around in an upside-down "U" shape, starting with the bottom colour (in this case, blue). Brush a little bit of water around the top of the arch and attach the next colour snake on. Continue until you've placed the last colour on. Take a long knife with a straight edge and cut the excess snakes off in one cut. Then, take 2 skewers and carefully poke them about 1" through the ends of the middle colour of the rainbow (in this case, yellow). These skewers are what help support the rainbow on top of the cake. Leave the rainbow to dry (about 4 hours in an airconditioned room) until it's stiff enough to stand without bending. Then you can stand it up vertically (either on the cake or styrofoam) so it can finish drying completely.
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| view of the back |
I used a cloud cookie cutter to make the clouds on the ends of the rainbow. The other clouds on the cake were all freehand-cut from white fondant so no two are exactly the same. To make the hot air balloons, I used an oval-shaped cookie cutter. I cut the stripes out from contrasting colours, cutting and trimming them to the right size using the same oval cutter. I used a mini star cutter to cut the stars out for the middle of the balloons. Interestingly, the baskets for the balloon were cut using my gingerbread man cookie cutter! Well, just the tip of his arm. It was the perfect width! Leave all these details to dry until they're stiff before attaching them onto the cake.
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| view from the side |
I used the panel method to cover the 2 cake tiers in lighter blue fondant. This method involves cutting a round circle for the "lid" and a long rectangular strip for the side of the cake. This method always gives a nice straight edge to the cake, and you don't have to deal with stretching and tearing that sometimes happens if a cake is covered in one big piece of fondant. The drawback is that there is always a join-line where the lid and the rectangle meet at the top of the cake. If your design involves a border, then this is no issue as it will be hidden underneath. You can try to make the join-line less visible by gently rubbing the edges together with some water and a fondant smoother, but it doesn't always work. I took some of the leftover fondant and mixed it with water until it formed a sort of paste, and then I smeared it along the join-line and tried my best to blend it in. It didn't completely get rid of the join-line but it helped to smoothen it out a bit.
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| hot air balloons, clouds & rainbow bunting |
To make the bunting, I cut a small triangle out of some cardboard and used that as a guide to cut out lots of fondant triangles from all the cheery pastel colours. I decided 5 bunting sections would work well for this 8" cake, so I marked out where they should be on the cake using a toothpick, before attaching the triangles onto the cake by brushing the backs of them with a little bit of water. Then I took the hot air balloons and the clouds and attached them on the cake with water again.
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| rainbow bunting |
The cake was finished off by topping it with the cheery pastel rainbow! I added two cloud-halves on the ends of the rainbow to complete the look. I love how this cake turned out! I had my doubts about the so-called "cheery pastel" colours, but it turned out really happy and cute in the end!
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| Rainbow & Hot Air Balloons Cake* |
The rainbow & hot air balloons cake was featured on Sugarena's lovely dessert table. The cake matched the customized backdrop so well, same shade of blue and everything! The customer commented that the cake was too nice to cut! I do hope they did cut it to find the 7-layer rainbow surprise inside!
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| yummy rainbow treats!* |
Sugarena really did a great job bringing out the "cheery pastel" rainbow theme, accenting the table with creative details, like rainbow "olive" canapes served in rainbow-ball decorated martini glasses, while letting the desserts be the stars of the table. I am sure the birthday boy and his guests couldn't wait to dive into this sugar high of rainbow sweets, floating on pillowy white "clouds"! Happy 1st birthday, Julius!
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| Happy 1st Birthday, Julius!* |
Photos courtesy of Sugarena
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