Orange is the color of the day.

One of my younger sisters recently asked me to make a birthday cake for a friend of hers.  The only request she made was that it be orange.  With that in mind, I also had the opportunity to use a couple of decorations I made in my recent Wilton decorating class.

I used the same almond cake recipe that I had used in my most recent tall cakes and used the same filling (sweetened strawberry puree and sure-gel) since it had turned out so well last time.  I made 2 10inch cakes and 2 8 inch cakes (round) and trimmed them into square cakes that were approximately 7.5 inches and 6 inches.

I realized a few things making square cakes from circles.  First, remember that geometry we learned in high school? Yeah the whole triangles inside circles and Pythagorean theorem thing they swore we would use and we were pretty sure we wouldn't?... Well it turns out that did come in handy. Second, I found out that it's really difficult to get right angles without a reference, and even then if you're the teensiest bit off on each one, you're a whole lot off in the end.  Finally, using butter cream on corners is messy business, but my class instructor just explained a method that I will definitely be trying the next time I do this.

The bow and carnation were things we made in class recently.  To color the bow orange I mixed glimmer dust (edible) with vanilla extract and painted it on.  I wasn't entirely happy with how it turned out, but I had made it white in class so it was either that or thin down some gel colors.  I painted some water onto the tip of all the petals on the carnation and rolled in in the shimmer dust as well.  I used a tip 5 to make all of the dots and tips 5 and 101 to make the mini roses. For the gift tag I used rolled fondant and an edible marker. 

I was not there when the cake was eaten, however my sister assured me that everyone enjoyed it.

-Beth