Pretty Purse

I love this cake. Plain and simple, I love it. I made it for a beautiful little girl who turned four this past Christmas. Her mom is a very dear and wonderful friend of mine, and I love that I get to make cakes for her daughters. I get to play with pink fondant and I'm usually afforded quite a bit of creative control. I also got to cheat on this cake and not put it on a cake board. Somehow not having to decorate a cake board made the process seem so much faster!

I started out with a rectangle cake which I cut into three equal pieces and stacked with buttercream in between the layers. I wanted to keep as much cake in tact as possible, so did as little carving as I could to achieve a purse shape. Unfortunately the fondant went on horribly (I had a little boy run to my legs and want to be picked up in the middle of covering the cake, which was not helping matters) but the white band detail on the bottom really adds something and hides the puckers. I made the flowers by pressing fondant in a silicon mould. These type of moulds are great since you get so much detail. This was the first time I had used this mould, and I love these little flowers! To make the butterfly, I just cut out a butterfly shape with a cookie cutter and sort of moulded the wings how I wanted them to look. After all the details dried, I dusted all them with white pearl dust to make them pop. The pearls were just a little added sweetness and are supposed to look a like the path the butterfly has flown from the flowers to the clasp of the purse.

I used gum paste to make the handle, which dries faster and harder than fondant so you're able to make these type of details without the fear of them drooping or falling over. It's also very light, so easy to adhere onto the cake.

After finishing I phoned my friend to describe what I had done. I was worried that it was too simple. I love simple and clean, unfussy design, but not everyone shares that same esthetic. After describing it to her I told her that if I had a daughter and this cake was for her, I would stop decorating now, and leave it. That was all she needed to hear. Thankfully she loved it, and most importantly her daughter loved it, too.

Little Antique Clutch

This past weekend I threw a bridal shower for my sister-in-law-to-be! Of course I had to make a cake for her, and this one was so much fun. I've been wanting to make a purse cake, and since C & J's wedding has an antique theme, I figured an antique clutch was the perfect cake for this celebration. The whole shower was a tea party, complete with scones, Devonshire cream, beautiful antique tea cups and plates. Super girly and fun!

I had originally found an antique clutch cake online that I really liked and was hoping to make. I started out carving that particular shape (it was more rectangular), but ended carving more of an oval. Of course I panicked. That just has to happen at least once in a cake-making experience. But once I stood back and re-thought my cake strategy, I realized that this was now my design, not someone's that I was trying to re-create. This afforded some sort of freedom for the rest of the carving process. So I visualized a new cake...my cake...and got excited once again.

After carving, then came covering the cake in buttercream and fondant. I have found that Gum Tex and cornstarch are my new best friends when covering a cake in fondant during the summer. I used to struggle so much with soft fondant, and now by adding Gum Tex to the fondant and rolling it out with a combination of icing sugar and cornstarch I don't get all the pulling and stretching that result in stretch marks (yes, cakes can have stretch marks) and cracks. Covering cakes has become much less stressful. Doesn't mean it always goes amazingly well, but it sure is going better than it used to for me!

The flower and pearls were so much fun to design and I love how simple and monochromatic the whole cake turned out. I had a leftover rose from the cake I had made for my mom's birthday last week, so I put that on the cake board as just a last finishing touch. I love it.


The great thing was that the cake was just as much fun to eat as it was to stare at. Of course this was C's favorite...chocolate cake with peanut butter filling. Yum. My favorite, too. It was such a pleasure to do this for C. She's so wonderful, and I'm so excited for her to be my sister-in-law!