Roses and Geometric Lines Wedding Cake

December 22, 2019

This was my very first wedding cake. At least officially. I've made plenty of cakes that could have been wedding cakes, but this was the first cake I've made that was actually for a wedding.

When I asked my friend what she wanted, she pointed at my architecture inspired farewell cake for inspiration.

But she needed different colors. In red and green, she said. What kind of red and green? Forest green and bordeaux red. Forest green wasn't too hard. I was actually able to buy some already colored. Bordeaux red is a bit harder.

I started out with some red fondant.

Then I added some black.

Now, I cannot explain at all why, but mixing black with red fondant turns it kind of muted and not at all dark. I had noticed that before.

So, I added more red gel food coloring to get the brightness back.

I wasn't quite sure if I was finished, but I decided to try this one.

I rolled out a piece.

And cut out some circles.

And made two roses.

At which point I decided that the color wasn't quite where I wanted it to be. It just wasn't dark enough to be bordeaux red.

I added more black fondant, as well as quite a bit of purple gel food coloring, with more red food coloring between to keep the color from fading.

I compared the color to bordeaux red from Google. It doesn't show up very well on camera, but this was pretty close.

Here you can see that the color is definitely deeper than the first roses.

Other preparation I did besides making what felt like a hundred fondant roses out of bordeaux red fondant, was that I also prepared the cake board. I covered an old cake board with silver reflective craft paper and edged it with metallic washi tape. Then, to make it food safe, I wrapped it with plastic wrap really tight so it wasn't super obvious.

Okay, maybe it was only around 20 roses...

I also cut a piece of cardboard into a circle and wrapped it with tin foil.

The cake itself is vegan chocolate cake and the frosting is Swiss meringue buttercream. I made 8 inch round and 6 inch round layers. I stacked the 8 inch round cakes and filled it with buttercream.

And I crumb coated the cake.

I stacked the second tier on the cake board.

And filled and frosted the six-inch cake the same as the eight-inch. Then I frosted both again to get the sharp edges and smooth sides.

Both tiers.

They specifically requested marzipan instead of fondant. Marzipan is made of ground almonds, so the cracks are just part of using marzipan.

I rolled it out nice and big and covered the cake with it.

Then I did the same thing with the other tier.

Then I placed a few dowels into the bottom tier and used buttercream between the tiers to help it stick.

And I placed the top tier on top.

Then I took the forest green fondant and kneaded it really well.

I thought about using all of these face plates for the clay extruder. I wanted a long thin strip. I eventually decided on the smallest one.

And I extruded a very long, thin strip of forest green.

I used the strip first to cover the edges of the tiers.

I had debated for a while compared to the original cake, but the original cake that was the inspiration was based on architecture, which is why I used the regular geometric shapes. But this one isn't necessarily, so I went a bit more traditional and used an abstract geometric design instead.

This includes just adding straight lines in seemingly random directions making triangles and trapezoids.

I continued this kind of pattern all along the sides of both tiers.

Finally, I placed the bordeaux red roses. I put the largest and prettiest right in the middle. In retrospect, I should have elevated it slightly so it would stand out more.