Happy Birthday Margarita!

My friend Jennifer asked me to make a cake for her mother's 70th Birthday today! How could I refuse a chance to bake and decorate a cake, my new favorite hobby! The only requirements Jennifer gave me with this cake were that it can feed about 30 people and to make it feminine. Other than that she told me to be creative and to surprise her! My imagination started running wild, on how I could make a special cake for her mother Margarita's 70th birthday...what a special celebration. I haven't really made any celebration cakes before so my mind was running wild trying to come up with something simple, yet elegant at the same time. I started browsing some of my favorite cake and blog websites and quickly found something that caught my eye....fondant flowers!


One of my cake baking blogging friends, Evan had this great tutorial on her blog about how to make sugar flowers, check it out here. This was pretty much my third experience ever using fondant, so I was hoping to just come up with an end result that somewhat resembled Evan's beautiful pink layered flower! I got out my decorating supplies...white fondant, rolling pin, fondant rolling mat, fondant ball tool, flower-forming foam and some daisy shaped cookie cutters and had my computer set to Evan's blog page to walk me through this step by step.


First I rolled out the fondant and cut out the largest daisy shape. Then I cut it into half to create two halves of 3 petals each.


Next I cut out 2 more daisy shapes. To make the layered flower you need 3 different sizes of the same shape cookie cutter.


Next place the fondant cutout on the forming foam and using the fondant ball tool to go over the edges.


Then overlap the petal edges and stick together with a dab of water.


You will roll the edges of all three flower sizes.


To create the bottom layer of the flower, I used three 3-petal halves of the daisy shape. After you create each layer place it in the bottom of a plastic wrap lined bowl to allow to set up and dry. Place the medium size layer on top of the largest bottom layer and dab some water on the petals to hold them together. Then place the smallest flower on top following the same method.


Once you have all three layers of the flowers placed on top of each other add a round ball of fondant to create the center of the flower. Then add some flower stamens (you can get these at Michaels) around the flower center. The fondant flower is now finished!


I ended up making a total of four fondant flowers...2 larger ones and 2 slightly smaller ones. I made the flowers the night before I was going to add them to the cake so they could set up.


Now that my sugar flowers are ready it is time to decorate the cake! First of all I added a pink fondant ribbon around the edge of the cake to tie in the pink center of the flowers.


I placed the largest flower in the top left corner of the cake and on each side placed a slightly smaller flower.


I wanted to create an overlapping look with the three flowers. Now it's time to personalize this birthday girl's cake!


I was pretty nervous about writing on this cake...I mean this is the final step and the one that scares me the most b/c in an instant your cake could be ruined if you misspell a word, especially the name of the person who you are making the cake for.


I was pretty pleased with how the writing came out though. Using a pen and paper I could have never written this birthday message in cursive without starting and stopping after each letter, and even then it wouldn't have looked this flowy. There is something about writing with buttercream icing though...it is just so smooth.


Well the birthday party that this cake is at is going on right this very moment, so hopefully everyone is enjoying the time they are spending with their loved one, Margarita on her special day!

P.S. I've got some exciting news! I just went and picked up my brand new CAMERA! I ordered a new Canon Rebel T1i after saving up my money for a few months and it just came in today. The battery is charging now so I'm sure by the end of the weekend you will see some new, better quality, more professional looking cake photos on my website. Be sure to check back at the end of the weekend...there is another birthday cake coming up...and this one will be featuring a monkey!