Cake #17: I Want Candy!

I was recently showing one of my co-workers some of my favorite cakes from Cakecentral, and she absolutely fell in love with this candy cake! Since she went so far as to actually purchase the kit-kats for the cake, I feel that the least I could do was actually bake the cake.

This is by far the easiest cake I've made in a long, long time. I merely had to ice the chocolate cake in chocolate buttercream and then add the candy. To make this cake on an 8 inch round cake, it takes about 8 1/2 - 9 regular sized kit-kat bars. (I only used 8 1/2, but after seeing how much space I'd left between the candies, I wish I'd have gone ahead and used the full 9. I'm hoping that the extra spacing will at least make the slicing a little easier...) Then, I simply added about 3/4 pound of plain M&Ms to the top of the cake. Simple, huh? I'm sure this cake will be death by chocolate...but what a good way to go!

Cake #16: Fondant and Gumpaste Finale

Tonight was my final Wilton cake class. Although I'm somewhat glad to be finished (not having the pressure of having to bake a cake each Monday and not lugging all my boxes of cake decorating supplies to Michaels), I'm going to be at a loss without my weekly cake instruction. I guess I'll just have to set up a cake schedule for myself...I definitely have a lot of ideas I'd like to try! Thank God for Cake Central!

For my finale cake, I decided to make several new gumpaste flowers from the Wilton gumpaste kit I recently purchased. I made a handful of pink orchids, which were extremely time consuming; unfortunately, they are also extremely fragile, so most of my orchids broke before I could even attach them to my cake. I also made numerous blue sweet peas, which proved to be much easier than the orchids! I had hoped to make many, many more flowers than actually ended up on the cakes, but with the extra difficulty of the gumpaste flowers that just didn't materialize. I'm sure the people at work won't mind!

Cake # 15: Pansies and Daisies for Sale

One of my co-workers is having a special family function, so I agreed to make this cake for her. Since her mother-in-law's favorite flower is the pansy and her mother likes daisies, I combined the two to create a wreath effect around the cake's top.

I iced this cake in a light-yellow buttercream and then covered the sides with the basket weave. I created the pansies from the basic royal icing and the daisies and leaves from fondant. I was really happy with how the daisies and leaves came out...the pansies could have been a little better though. However, once it was all combined together on the cake, the end result was quite pleasant - I hope she likes it too!