Tutti Fruity Cake and Cookies

A "fruit party" is a fun and "summery" theme, plus it makes everyone think that it's gonna be a healthy affair cuz of all the fruit! But, aside from fruit cups and fruit skewers, there really isn't any actual fruit in the desserts! (Actually I don't even know if there was actual fruit at the party cuz I wasn't responsible for anything healthy. Haaa!) 

Tutti Fruity Fruit Cake

After having the unicorn cake and cupcakes for her celebration at school, this fruit party was for the same lucky birthday girl, celebrating at home with a pool party with her friends and family. I got to make the fruit cake and lots of cookie fruit slices! 

Fruit Cookies

The cake is 3 tiers of the family favourite: devil's food cake with whipped dark chocolate ganache. I have been lucky enough to be making lots of cakes for the birthday girl's family these past few years (4th year in a row making the birthday girl's cake!), and they always choose the devil's food cake! Mmm that chocolatey goodness is addicting! (Still waiting for someone to tell me that chocolate is a certified and healthy fruit :P)

chocolate fruit cake :P

The cake has a buttercream finish for all three tiers, with fondant accents. While a buttercream finish does not get that super polished look that a cake finished in fondant does, it is a cost-saving and "less sugar" option. Anyway, buttercream can be smooth with sharp edges too :)  

pineapple cake tier

The top-tier is decorated like a pineapple. I added the criss-cross pattern using a knife after the buttercream was cold and hard, straight from the fridge. The pineapple stem was made out of green fondant, wrapped around a chopstick to help it stand on the cake.

view from the top

The middle tier was made to be like a watermelon, covered in pink buttercream, black fondant "seeds" and bordered with white and green fondant. I used a large plum flower plunger cutter and a knife to cut teardrop-shaped "seeds" from fondant for the watermelon seeds. 

making watermelon seeds

juicy watermelon cake tier

The bottom tier was orange, which is one of two fruits that has the same name as its colour. Can you guess what the other fruit is? (haha my kids and I always play "guess the fruit" on car rides. We take turns to describe a certain fruit and then guess what that fruit is!) It was decorated with fondant orange slices, and an apple slice with the birthday girl's name on it. 

apple, the birthday girl's fave

lots and lots of fruit!

To embellish the cake, I made slices of watermelon, lemon, lime, orange and apple (the birthday girl had specifically asked for slices of apple be included!). I also made 3D fondant fruits: cherries, strawberries and a wedge of lime. My favourite has to be the strawberries though. They just look so red and ripe! Made me want to eat an actual strawberry. (actual fresh strawberries at a fruit party? the horrors!! haha. just kidding)

love those juicy red strawberries!

The cookies were fruit slices too, of course. Kiwi, watermelon, orange, apple and pineapple. I used a balloon cookie cutter for the apple, stretching the cutter out a bit to make it more round. I used an egg shaped cookie cutter for the pineapple, and hand-cut the stem shape out of the cookie dough with a knife. The kiwi, orange and watermelon were cut using different-sized round cookie cutters. 

naked cookies, ready to be iced

Fruit Cookies

Roya icing is super quick to whip up. I like to use meringue powder instead of raw egg whites, to eliminate the risk of salmonella. Just dissolve the meringue powder in a little warm water, add icing sugar and whisk the everything for 10 mins on the mixer at low speed. boom, royal icing, done. 

royal icing bags

But what takes a much longer time is tinting the icing and getting every colour to be the right consistency for piping and flooding! I usually whip up a large batch of stiff consistency royal icing to start, and then tint and adjust the consistency for each colour that I need, depending on the cookie design. 

kiwi-cookie flooding action

Both the kiwi and orange cookie designs involved wet-on-wet flooding technique, which meant that the different colours were put on the cookie while everything was still wet, so that it dried as one layer. I used a cookie scribe (you can also use a toothpick) to "pull" the lighter coloured icing out into the darker coloured icing to get this effect on the kiwi and the orange. To get a pop-out effect for the seeds on the orange, I piped them on after the surface of the base flood had dried. 

orange slice cookies

For the watermelon, pineapple and apple slices, I waited for each section to dry before filling in the next section with icing so that there would be a distinction between the sections (for example the pineapple stem), instead of having everything run together in one layer, as with the kiwi. 

watermelon slices

pineapple cookies, dusted with a little cocoa powder 

cross-section apple cookies

And for you PPAP fans, I couldn't help but take this photo. And of course, after that, I had the song stuck in my head all day. Darn you, Daimaou Kasoka! 

PPAP: pen pineapple apple pen

fruit cookie platter

Here's a shot of the cake all boxed up. For extra tall cakes like this, I use two boxes, one upside down on top of the other. Sure, there are super tall transparent cake boxes available, but most people would rather save the money than pay $20 just for a box! Anyway, I hope the birthday girl had a super fun pool party with her friends and family! Happy 6th birthday to the lovely Isha!

Cake boxed and ready to party!

fruit slice (cookie), anyone?

Happy 6th Birthday, Isha!

PS: that answer to the "guess the fruit" question is peach! Ok, ok, so a peach isn't actually peach in colour. But peach is both a fruit and a colour. :P