wedding cake tutorial

Oyster Shell Ocean Cake Tutorial

March 15, 2022 By Ashley 2 Comments

I’ve been wanting to make a cake with oyster shells for a while, so while planning tutorial content, I had to put this oyster shell ocean cake tutorial at the top of the list. This tutorial features multiple techniques, including fondant marbling, rice paper waves, wafer paper sea foam, sugar pearls and making and painting realistic gum paste oyster shells.

Supplies:

6″ and 8″ tiers, fully covered in ganache or buttercream

White fondant

White gum paste

Gel Color – brown, gray, black, sky blue

Rolling pin

Silicone mats for rolling fondant and shaping waves

Exacto knife

Prepared gum paste oyster shells

White chocolate, melted

Freeze spray

Piping gel

Craft tweezers, for applying pearls

Marbled Fondant

My goal for the fondant was to create more of a linear marbling, rather than a fully dispersed, swirled mixed marble. For this technique you will need to panel your cake. I start by making the colors of fondant I want to use. I left some fondant white, but colored some ivory with the ivory gel color, nude with just a smidge of brown gel, and light gray with a smidge of black gel. You will need to make a panel for the 6″ tier and the 8″ tier and also the rounds for tops of both tiers.

I rolled out each color into rope shapes and place them tightly together.

Roll the fondant together with your hands to form a long, thick rope. Twist the rope to blend the colors.

Roll the paste into a snail shape.

Stretch and lengthen the snail shape and roll into another longer, thick rope.

Once again, roll the fondant into a snail shape.

Roll the fondant out to fit a 6″ panel. Panel the cake with the fondant, do not cut the excess paste off the top yet. You’ll do this after adding the top panel.

With the leftover marbled fondant from this panel, roll into a rope shape, then into a snail shape.

Flatten the snail shape and roll until about 1/4″. Cut out a 6″ round for the top of the tier.

Place the top panel of the cake. Cut off the excess paste and smooth the fondant and seams with a fondant smoother.

Repeat the steps for the 8″ tier.

While the fondant is still pliable, press sanding sugar and white nonpareils into the the cake in random areas. Don’t add too many, just enough to give the cake some texture.

Rice Paper Waves

Rice paper can be found in most grocery stores, or Asian markets. Rice paper is used for spring rolls. Soaking them in water softens them and makes them pliable. They can be shaped and will become firm once dry. For my waves, I added a small amount of sky blue to a pan filled with room temperature water. Only a small amount of color is absorbed into the rice paper, so color the water a shade or two darker than the shade you’re aiming for. I prepared the shaping forms for my rice paper by wrapping silicone mats around 6″ and 8″ dummy tiers.

Place a sheet of rice paper into the water, making sure it’s fully submerged. Let the paper soak for 20 seconds. Flip the paper over and and let it soak until fully softened.

Remove the rice paper from the water, letting the excess water drip off.

Form the rice paper on the silicone mat, leaving some creases and folds.

Taper the end of the wave a bit. Once you like the shape, leave to dry completely. I made 6 waves total. Reserve the remaining blue water for the wafer sea foam.

Once the waves are dry, use a dry paintbrush and dust the waves with pearl luster dust.

Wafer Paper Sea Foam

To achieve the sea foam look, you will need to fry the wafer paper. This technique is commonly used to make wafer paper lace, but for the foam, the goal to get it to bubble, not to create a lacy texture. I used a standard wafer paper thickness, but you can use what you have on hand. Any will work well for this.

Heat a nonstick frying pan over medium heat.

While the pan is heating, tear the wafer paper into 4-6 pieces. I used 2 sheets of wafer paper to have a variety of shapes to choose from. You will also be able to shape the wafer paper to the desired size after it has cooled from frying.

Quickly dip the wafer into the reserved blue water and lay it flat into the frying pan. The paper will shrink and bubble. Watch closely to prevent any browning. Reduce the heat a bit if you’re seeing any browning.

Once the paper has bubbled and appears dry, remove the wafer and let it cool on a silicone mat or a piece of parchment paper.

Repeat the steps for the remaining paper.

Sugar Pearls

Make sugar pearls with the gum paste by rolling different size balls. Be sure to keep the pearls one the small side. They tend to look a bit unnatural on the cake if they’re too big. I made about 20-30 pearls to have some extra on hand. When the pearls are dry, place them into a tiptop bag. Sprinkle a little bit of the luster dust into the bag and seal the top. Shake the bag to fully coat the pearls with luster dust.

Oyster Shells

There is a full tutorial for these oyster shells here. There you will find the supplies used, how to make them, and a detailed step by step on how to paint them.

Assembling the Cake

The primary focus to this cake is off to the right hand side. The waves should come off and away from the cake. I used 3 waves per tier. There a few ways to attach rice paper waves to the cake. My favorite way is to attach them at the base of the waves with melted white chocolate and freeze spray. Freeze spray dries the chocolate instantly. No slipping or falling waves.

Tear or shape the wafer sea foam into mid size pieces. You can attach the foam with piping gel and (optional) freeze spray as mentioned above. Attach the foam at the bases of the waves. This will cover the ends of the rice waves but also keep the design a bit more seamless. Overlap the foam pieces so that they don’t look to separated. Think of it as trying to keep the design as seamless as possible.

Place the oyster shells onto the cake. Again, I used melted white chocolate and freeze spray to attach. I place the oyster shells along the bottom tier, along the 6″ tier and at the top of the 6″ tier.

With a set of craft tweezers, attach the sugar pearls with piping gel along the edge of the design in clusters, with a few random pearls being placed an inch or two away from the edge of the design.

If you make a cake using any of the techniques within this oyster shell ocean cake tutorial, let me know! Drop a comment or tag me on Instagram. I love seeing your bakes and creations.

Enjoy!

Ash xx

For more tutorials, check out these posts:

Still Life Flowers Cake

Floral Piped Royal Icing Cake Tutorial

Under the Sea Cake Tutorial

Vintage Gilded Buttercream Cake Tutorial

Still Life Flowers Cake: Mini Tutorial

February 21, 2022 By Ashley Leave a Comment

One of my biggest inspirations in creating sugar art, is art itself. I’m not limited to any type of art, as I find inspiration in art of all kinds, but I do especially love the Dutch masters paintings of still life, particularly flowers. This cake is inspired by such art. If you check out my portfolio or Instagram feed, you’ll see sugar flower arrangements that I have made based on still life art as well. For my Still Life Flowers cake, I wanted to capture the moodiness of those paintings, as well as the vivid, often haphazard floral arrangement, in a variety of colors.

The Fondant

I started with a charcoal/dark eggplant colored fondant. I made my own marshmallow fondant for this project – Sugar Geek Show’s recipe, with 1 tbsp of black gel color. Within the past couple years or so, I’ve really been on a crusade to have less than perfect fondant for all of my cakes. After creating perfect wedding cakes for so long, I’ve embraced imperfection, which 9.5/10 time is a success. Texture, and imperfection is KEY to art and creating.

So, when making this fondant, I didn’t fully melt the marshmallows. I was curious to see what the texture would be like, and weird as it may be, it didn’t disappoint. It created little pockets that the color couldn’t fully saturate, giving the fondant a rough, sort of concrete-like texture when applied to the cake. And so I went with it.

Coloring the fondant

As for the color, many brands of black gel food color tend to have either a green or purple undertone, and I chose one with a purple undertone to achieve the color. To give the tiers a vignette look, I brushed along the bottom and top edges of each tier with a mixture of eggplant, charcoal, and black petal dusts.

Texturing with Stencils

For more texture, and to impart a filigree-like design for a little elegance, I used a stencil and black royal icing. I stenciled each tier, only about 1/2-2/3 of the way around, and alternated which side I stenciled to give the tiers a staggered look. I didn’t perfectly stencil the tiers, I left some gaps and sort of trailed off the stenciling so it didn’t end so abruptly. If you’re unsure about the direction a design is going, proceed with the design as planned, but do it with intention. It makes all the difference.

Placing the Flowers

Once the stenciling was dry, I placed the flowers. I wanted the floral arrangement to be a bit off kilter on the cake. I knew the floral arrangement would be the star, but still wanted the stenciling and bas relief (more on that soon), to really show as well.

I always start with the largest and heaviest sugar flowers first – the peony and David Austin type rose. It’s good to do this so that you can really anchor and secure them in the cake. Placing these flowers also act as a lead for placement for the remaining flowers.

Arranging Sugar Flowers

Then I placed the mid-size one off flowers – the anemone, ranunculus and rose. I only made one of each and wanted them to be seen. Then I placed the iris’, one placed within the arrangement off to the side, then one coming up off the top of the arrangement. I placed the chocolate cosmos – check out my post on chocolate cosmos for a FULL TUTORIAL for those. I added the sugar apricots to the lower left, and the blackberries and blossoms to fill any unflattering negative space.

Lastly one of my favorite additions to any floral arrangement, adding floral components that appear to come off from the cake or give the arrangement any movement. I added some vines with some small leaves and blossoms to give the arrangement some whimsy and flow. I decided not to add any additional leaves and chose to just focus on the flowers for this cake.

Still Life Flowers Cake Finishing Touches

Often times, I will add final cake details after I add the florals, so that those details flow with, or are accentuated by the arrangement. I used the same fondant I used to cover my cakes and some floral moulds I had on hand to create some shallow bas relief. I placed the bas relief around the florals, taking care to not make each tier look too similar. I had no plan for adding the bas relief. I just added it where I thought it would look nice. Avoid symmetry when placing them.

To accentuate the bas relief, I dusted them with a little bit of bronze petal dust. I like how it sort of ages the bas relief and gives it more of an antique look. I totally love the bronze on black and feel like I need to revisit this look in the future on another cake.

So there you have it, a mini tutorial on how I made this cake. If you make a cake using any of the techniques within this Still Life Flowers tutorial, let me know! Drop a comment or tag me on Instagram. I love seeing your bakes and creations.

Enjoy!

Ash xx

For more tutorials, check out these posts:

Floral Piped Royal Icing Cake Tutorial

Under the Sea Cake Tutorial

Vintage Gilded Buttercream Cake Tutorial

Floral Piped Royal Icing Cake Tutorial

September 3, 2020 By Ashley 8 Comments

I’ll admit, piping techniques on cakes are not my strongest skill set. I can pipe all sorts of borders, sure, but any sort of piped design, lambeth techniques or flowers, count me out. I’m most definitely a work in progress with those techniques, but with this cake, I discovered a piping technique that I love. Not only is it easy, but it doesn’t have to be absolutely perfect. A little whimsy is preferred here. This easy floral piped royal icing cake is easier than you think and the options with this technique are endless.

Supplies

Fondant covered cakes (My cakes are 6×5, 8×5, 10×5 and 12×5)

Royal icing – stiff and piping consistencies, either white or light yellow

Edible gold dust

Clear high proof alcohol, or clear extract

Fine detail paint brush

#2 piping tips

Piping bags

Edible marker

Ascending bead mould

Variety of petal cutters – your preference (I used peony cutters)

Circle cutters (I used 1/2″ and 1″ cutters)

Plotting out the space for the piping and the beading designs

Before creating the flower design and piping, measure the out the space where the piping, and the bead design will go.

For the 6″, measure 3 1/2″ across the middle of the tier with a ruler, and used an edible black marker to make a small mark the middle, at 1 3/4″. Use the marker to then draw a little line at 0 and 3 1/2″. Now the top tier will be the guide on centering all of the other tiers. You can see an example of my lines in the upper right corner of the photo below.

For the 8″, place the ruler up to the center mark on the 6″, vertically, so that the ruler is straight up and down against the 8″ tier as well. Mark a small dot on the fondant to note the center of the 8″. Place the ruler horizontally onto the 8″ tier now, placing the ruler on the center dot at 2 1/4″. Place another small dot at 0 and 4 1/2″.

Repeat the same process for the 10″ tier, marking small spots with the marker at the center at 2 3/4, and on either side at 0 and 5 1/2.

Repeat the same process for the 12″ tier, marking small spots with the marker at the center of 3 1/4″, and on either side a 0 and 6 1/2″

The center mark keeps the design centered down each tier, and the marks to either side indicate the size space of the design, and also indicates where the bead design will go.

Impressing the cake with petal cutters

I decided to use (2) peony petal cutters to make the general floral pattern. I wanted to use the peony petals to match the large peony that I created for the floral topper arrangement. I also like the frilliness of the petals. You can use any cutters that you prefer. Note that the fondant on your cake to still be soft enough to be able to make an impression. In addition to using the peony cutters, I used (2) small circle cutters as well to indicate the flower centers.

Impress the flower centers first. Use a light hand, and only just make a faint outline. Place a full flower here and there if you wish, but make it look more organic by only impressing parts of flowers. Be sure to cover the center mark with the flowers, but do not impress beyond the two outer lines on the tier. Remember, this is where the beaded design will go.

Floral piped royal icing

Once you have made the faint petal impressions, prepare your piping bags for the floral piped royal icing technique. Make one icing bag with piping consistency royal icing, and another with stiff royal icing. Set the stiff bag aside, and fit the piping consistency bag with a #2 tip. Outline the flower petals with the piping royal icing. Add extra frills to the edges if you like, just remember it doesn’t have to be perfect. If you make a mistake, use a toothpick to scrape off the icing. Make some veining lines in the centers of each flower petal, coming from the center of the petal or from the outer edge. Be sure to not overlap the side lines. Stay within the designated area or you will be scraping off dry royal icing later.

After piping the flower petals, pipe the centers. Fit the stiff royal icing piping bag with a #2 piping tip. Pipe little dots in the centers. Go beyond the circle to create more imperfect circles. Overlap some of the dots to give the center a bit more of a pop and some depth. Let all the piping dry completely before painting.

How to make the beading effect

An ascending drop string of beads mould is needed to make the beading. You can find them at Michael’s Craft Store and Iron Orchid Designs (find a retailer near you, or a retailer online on their website – the Acanthus mould). I used the IOD mould for this cake. The string of beads on this mould are exactly 5″ so I used one full string on each tier, on either side of the piping, to create a straight line on both sides. Make (2) for each tier, and let dry for 10 minutes so they’re not too soft. Adhere the beads to the cake with water, in ascending order, with the largest bead at the bottom of the cake tier.

Design the rest of the beaded design on a silicone mat so that you have a guide, and can make them all identical. Since the moulds are going to be a bit different depending on what mould you have, it’s best to use the photos in this post as a guide to make them as similar as possible.

Painting the royal icing

Create a gold paint by adding alcohol to the gold dust until a thick paint forms. You don’t want this too thin, as it could drip and won’t have much coverage, but not too thick, that clumps of gold are left behind. You can also use Edible Arts gold paints as a substitute. Use a fine paintbrush to carefully paint the royal icing.

So, this is a do as I say, not do as I do sort of moment. I painted the gold BEFORE adding the beads. Oof. Spare yourself the mess of gold dust flake off, by painting the icing gold AFTER adding the beads.

Finishing touches

Leave the cake as it is, in its elegant simplicity, or with a sugar flower arrangement on top, as I did. To get remove any excess flour from the fondant or any random gold dust, lightly steam the cake with a steamer. You don’t want the fondant to appear wet or get warm, so just a little bit of steam will do the trick. The tutorial for my peony featured on this cake is listed below.

I hope you love this tutorial as much as I have loved creating it. Any questions, be sure to leave them below or DM me on Instagram. If you use any of these techniques in this floral piped royal icing cake, I’d LOVE to see your creations. Tag me on Instagram!

Ash xx

For more cake decorating tutorials, check out these posts:

Under the Sea Cake Tutorial

Vintage Gilded Buttercream Cake Tutorial

Woodland Tree Stump Cake Tutorial

Gum Paste Peony Tutorial

Vintage Gilded Buttercream Cake Tutorial

August 5, 2020 By Ashley 1 Comment

After working with mostly fondant over the years, I’ve been playing around with buttercream a lot lately, and I’m loving it. I love the messy nature of buttercream, where flaws and rustic application can make a design look stunning. Buttercream doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s delicious and adaptable, and wild like nature, imperfect, and more often than not, celebrated for its messiness. Perfectly iced buttercream cakes won’t be found in this post – in a different post another time, I’m sure. And so, I’ve created this buttercream beauty for a giveaway with Iron Orchid Designs over on my Instagram feed. I know you guys have heard me talk about these fab products before, but this time, I’m using them on buttercream. My vintage gilded buttercream cake incorporates easy and fast buttercream techniques that can be adapted to almost any buttercream cake design.

How to create rough edge buttercream

The color of this bottom tier is one of my favorites. I’m obsessed with this wine color buttercream. I have made this color plenty of times using gum paste, and I wanted to recreate the color to use as the bottom tier of my cake. To color this tier, I used both oil based candy color and gel color. I mixed equal parts of red and purple candy color, and added a touch of black gel color. Mix the purple and red first and let the buttercream develop for a few hours. Check out my post on How to Color Buttercream to see my techniques on how to achieve dark and vibrant colors. Then add a bit of black to just darken the buttercream a few shades. Keep in mind, the buttercream will darken a bit as it sits.

The top two tiers have a base color of dusty cream. To achieve this color, I mixed small, equal amounts of Americolor soft brown and ivory. My ivory gel color has a bit of an orange hue, so I mix the ivory with the soft brown to lessen the warm undertones.

The rough edge buttercream look has been super popular since Megan and Harry’s royal wedding cake. It’s also super easy to achieve. Rough edged buttercream is a total time saver – no need to use acrylics or the upside down method for a perfectly smooth top.

After filling and crumb coating the cake, chill the cake until it’s firm, for a couple hours or so. Smooth buttercream over the top of the cake, smoothing it out past the edges. Coat the sides of the cake with buttercream, layering it on, especially towards the top. How much buttercream you bulk up at the top edges of the cake will determine how tall and thick the rough edges are. Use a bench scraper to scrape off the excess and smooth the sides. Don’t worry about perfectly smooth buttercream, as I said before, imperfect is what we’re going for in this design. Chill the cakes, only chilling the top two tiers for about 5 minutes. You want the buttercream to set just slightly to keep it in place when adding additional colors on top. You do not want the buttercream to fully set up, as it can change color when scraping the cake. This is particularly true with buttercream based buttercream.

Creating the watercolor buttercream effect

On the top two tiers, under the gold stamped design, is a minimal buttercream watercolor effect. Both shades were created using very little amounts of claret gel color by ProGel. With a small offset spatula or a palette knife, place patches of buttercream around the cake, starting with the darker color. Use a bench scraper to even out the color around the cake. Add the lighter color, then repeat with the darker color until you’re satisfied with the color. I chose lighter colors for this cake so that the colors sort of blend together for a minimal, blended watercolor effect.

When choosing colors for the watercolor technique, you want to be sure that the colors look good together and will also blend well. You don’t want the colors to mix together and turn strange and unappetizing colors. I like to use buttercream colors that are made with the same combination of gel colors, or colors that are made by combining different buttercream colors together. Chill the watercolor cakes until the buttercream is firm. The buttercream needs to be thoroughly cold in order to stamp the pattern onto the cake, otherwise the buttercream will stick to the stamp, or squish out the sides.

Creating the vintage stamped effect

The stamp set that I used is the rose toile stamp from Iron Orchid Designs. I also used a craft brayer roller, mine is from Iron Orchid, but this one works well too. You will need parchment paper, or wax paper, and gold edible paint. I recommend this one, or you can create a gold paint with edible gold dust and a clear alcohol. If you choose to make your own, you will need more than half of a small pot of gold dust. Mix the alcohol with the dust until you it’s a thicker liquid. It needs to be thick enough to coat the stamp, but thin enough to be able to easy transfer to the cake.

Roll the craft roller through the edible paint. Roll off any excess, then roll over the stamp to coat. Do not saturate the stamp so that’s dripping, but ensure that the stamp is damp with color. Carefully lift the stamp and place against the cake. Carefully, and lightly press to the cake, taking care not to press IN to the cake, though it’s likely you will get some pressed in impressions. This is totally ok – it goes with the vintage design. Gently and lightly run your fingers over the stamp to stamp the pattern onto the cake.

You can also use the roller to roll over the stamp. I use this method when using the stamp on a flat surface, like a cookie, or paneled fondant or if I am trying to achieve full design coverage with the stamp. For this cake, I went with a more aged, almost peeling vintage-y look. I achieved this look by pressing over the stamp in select areas, leaving some spots light or bare. Then take a fine paintbrush and go over any areas you would like darkened, or more filled in.

Let the stamped impressions dry before stacking the cakes. After stacking the cakes, add any florals. For this cake, I used gum paste/sugar heirloom roses, anemones, roses, heritage roses, petunias, blossoms, and rose leaves. Use any flowers that compliment your color scheme, or even skip flowers – the cake is beautiful enough on its own!

For more cake tutorials, check out these posts:

Woodland Tree Stump Tutorial

Mini Tutorial: Romantic Roses Cake

Mini Tutorial: White on White Baroque Cake

Mini Tutorial: Romantic Roses Cake

January 29, 2020 By Ashley Leave a Comment

[This post is written in partnership with Satin Ice. All text and opinions are 100% mine. Thank you for supporting brands that help me and my business grow!]

Valentine’s Day is the inspiration behind this “mini” tutorial for my Romantic Roses cake. This cake is sponsored by my sweet friends over at Satin Ice. Their new buttercream icing mix was perfect for palette knife buttercream painting. While this is actually a fondant covered cake, mixed media elements like buttercream and royal icing techniques – such as palette knife painting, detailed piping, buttercream flowers, etc. look amazing together and allows you to incorporate several different techniques.

I’m calling this a “mini” tutorial because I’m sharing how I made this cake, but it’s not a step by step detailed tutorial. The idea is to share how I created this cake, and to share a technique and some information for you to be able to replicate it on your cakes. A reader wrote to me recently asking for me to keep in mind beginner cake tutorials when creating tutorials. I will most definitely be creating tutorials for ALL skill levels and ALL sorts of cakes – birthday cakes, wedding cakes, themed cakes, holiday cakes, etc. Keep in mind that many of the techniques featured in my full or mini tutorials can be applied to any size or style of cake, and many are perfect for all skill levels. Trust me, I’m going to do my best to not let any of you leave a post empty handed.

After determining that palette knife buttercream painting was definitely on the table for this cake, and Valentine’s Day was an underlying theme, my mind went to color next. I wanted to incorporate dark reds, pinks, and blush tones. And what screams Valentine’s Day more than ROSES? To keep with rose theme, I created hybrid tea roses, heirloom roses, David Austin garden roses, and little climbing roses and rose buds. I also added in some rose leaves and some twisty vines.

I used Satin Ice fondant for this cake, which I colored with Crystal Colors petal dust in Champagne and Blush, mostly equal parts. I wanted a blush color for the cake but I wanted it more of a cool, muted, vintage-y tone and not so harshly pink. I’ve been experimenting with using dusts for coloring fondant simply to get more of a targeted color. I find that it’s a bit more difficult to achieve the desired color if I’m using gel colors. Food safe dusts come in such a large variety of colors which allows me to achieve the color I’m aiming for much easier. However, if you don’t have these colors, you can use Americolor electric pink and Wilton brown to achieve a similar color. Avoid Americolor brown – there’s a bit too much orange in it. Incorporate very little color gradually since gels are more concentrated.

I used the same petal dusts to color my buttercream to match the fondant, which was fairly simple to do since the buttercream mix is pure white. Satin Ice buttercream mix comes as a soft dough. To the dough, you add butter or shortening and water to create an American style buttercream. The buttercream mix is very customizable to most projects. It’s stiff enough for piping flowers and ruffles, but you can also make it soft enough to mimic the same consistency as a meringue based buttercream, which happens to be my favorite buttercream to use. To get that consistency, I added water 1/2 teaspoon at a time until it was soft and smooth, like peanut butter.

Because I wanted my palette knife painting to be focused around the sugar flowers, I placed the sugar flowers first. Once the flowers were placed, I created buttercream “petals” around the flowers, by pressing the buttercream coated palette knife up against the cake and gently pulling down and away, to create a slightly grooved petal. Take care not to place your petals too symmetrical. The petals can be different sizes and don’t have to be perfectly neat. Consider creating your petals based on the shape you want your petals to have and direction you want your painting to go. Once I finished the painting, I added some white sugar dragees that I painted gold with a mix of clear alcohol and gold dust.

And really, that’s it. A super simple technique just to get acquainted with palette knife buttercream painting. I’m totally in love with the technique and can’t wait to do some palette knife buttercream flowers. Let me know if you try this out!

Check out these posts for more sugar art tutorials:

Gum Paste Blackberries, Leaves and Blossoms tutorial

Essential Tools for Making Sugar Flowers