Just Peachy!

So it has been a while between posts... apologies for my laziness!

But what better way to get back into the swing of things than with a peach- coloured feast of tiered cake, macarons and cupcakes!

And flowers. Don't forget the flowers.


Last week a friend of mine celebrated her 21st birthday (happy birthday Molly!) and had asked me to provide the cake, accompanied by matching macarons and cupcakes. As you may have suspected, I immediately agreed!

Flavour wise, chocolate is always a pretty safe bet when you have a large party, though as it happens the birthday girl's lovely mother is allergic to chocolate. Hmmmmm....
No problemo! Just like with my Minion Cake I did last year, this cake has a traditional chocolate base and a white chocolate top tier. For those who aren't aware, white chocolate isn't technically chocolate as it doesn't contains cocoa solids and so many of those who can't tolerate the brown stuff can actually eat it worry free. That said, if you are baking for someone with a known choc-aversion make sure it actually is the cocoa solids which affect them and not some other ingredient.

Moving on from irritable bowels...

Each layer of the cake was filled with a chocolate ganache (white and dark respectively) and a layer of vanilla buttercream and then given an outer coating of buttercream and covered with fondant. I used my airbrush to coat each layer in a light peach colour and then added a little white trim just to break up the colour a little. 

Using a mixture of gumpaste and fondant, several days earlier I had made some ruffle-edged flowers of varying sizes which I attached to the side of the cake (and also used to top the matching cupcakes). These flowers are extremely simple to make, if a little delicate! Unfortunately I wasn't able to photograph each step as I made these ones but you can find 100+1 tutorials on how to do it yourself by simply googling "fondant ruffle flower tutorial". Thanks Google!

But what good is a cake without complimenting macarons and cupcakes right? 

No good at all!

So, to tie the whole thing together I knocked up a batch of champagne buttercream macarons, lightly tinted in the same colour as the cake. At the party they were presented in a clear fishbowl which looked awesome!

Last but not least, we have the vanilla and buttercream cupcakes topped with mini ruffled flowers to match the cake. Because you can never have to much of a good thing (maybe...) the icing was also coloured to match the cake and macarons, tying in the whole display rather nicely!

 

So that's basically what I was up to last week! Overall I was quite happy with how everything turned out. There were a couple of slight imperfections with the cake which no one else seemed to even notice (maybe I'm just too obsessive?) but I take them as just another learning curve in my work with fondant.  

Thoughts? Ideas? Have you been scared off peach forever by a traumatic experience with hideous bridesmaid dresses? Let me know!