This cake was made for the daughter of one of my colleagues. I was given a picture of this cake design. The picture showed this cake in all white: white fondant, white orchids, white ribbon. But my colleague wanted pink and chocolate brown. She also wanted words of inspiration written around each of the tiers. It was tough to find orchids to match this cake. I found pure white orchids with yellow centers, fuscia petals with yellow centers, or tiger orchids. But none of these were a good match. I finally found these off-white orchids with pink highlights. I thought they were a perfect match and really worked well with the brown ribbon and writing.
Structurally, this cake was a challenge for me. Each tier had to be perfect and appear as if it was “floating,” and not sitting on a plate with a margin. I ended up putting the cakes on boards that were cut about 1″ smaller than the cake. Then I glued those boards to a smooth plastic plate of the same size. I put white ribbon around the outer edge of the cardboard rounds/plastic so it would be neat and clean, just in case someone looked underneath the tier. This was particularly important for the top tier. It had to be very clean. When I covered the cakes with fondant, I tucked about 1″ of fondant underneath the bottom — just enough so it would cover the exposed 1″ of cake underneath. I made sure to press this tucked piece of fondant very, very thin so it would not bulge and show itself.
I used PVC dowels on the bottom tier so the vase would be easily supported. I wanted plenty of support so the vase would not sink into the fondant and cause tearing or ripples.
I used a laser lever to make sure the words were written on the same level. Without it, I would have started writing downhill.
The structure of the cake, despite looking simple, is where I spent most of my time. Overall, I spent about 13 hrs on this cake. This included all baking, filling, icing, fondant, etc. But once the fondant is rolled on, the cake goes very quickly.
The design of this cake is wonderful. It is very simple and modern. The original picture I saw, in pure white, was very elegant. But I think it translated very well into pink/brown. It could be done in black/white or green/white and still be very clean and modern.
