cutebugdesigns: Hula girl cake

I had a lots of fun creating this cake for my little girls birthday. In case you missed my previous posts you can find the party here and my hula girl figure tutorial here.

I started the figure a week before so she'd be nice and firm by party time.

I usually bake my cake and make my frostings 3 days before the event. The buttercream gets tastier and it helps break up my work. Most of which is done in the wee hours to avoid little hands from my two year old ~~terror~~ cutie.

Cakecentral.com is a great resource for recipes, inspiration, and tips. I've learned a TON from that site. In a future post I'll show a quick tutorial on how to help get those layers even without sagging and having the seam where you layer your cakes visible.

Two days before the cake needed to be complete I made my flowers. I wanted to create a hibiscus flower but found it hard to find a reasonably priced cutter so I decided to improvise. I used one of the flower cutters that came in my wilton kit when I took classes last year. They are plastic so they don't cut great but I made them work.

1. Roll out your fondant / gumpaste mix thin. (50/50 mix)

2. Cut out your flower with your cutter. Press very good around the outer and inner edges to get a clean cut.

3. Take your exacto and cut each petal in towards the center to make the petals thinner.

4. Place on foam pad that has been dusted with a cornstarch powder mix. Take your ball gumpaste tool and dip that in the mixture every petal or so to prevent it from sticking. You want to put pressure on the outside of the petal from one edge of the petal to the other. You can do this a few times to get the desired thinning and curling of the petal. I also pressed in a bit with the ball tool to help it curl up.

5. I then pinched the edges of the petals a bit.

6. Roll tear drop shaped pieces to place as the centers of the flower, attaching with tylose glue. I used papertowel pieces to help some of them dry upwards.

7. Now lay to dry on petal tray to help them curve a bit.

8. I used pink pearl dust around the edges on the white flowers to add some color, sorry I didn't take a picture of the process. Just use a dry paint brush to apply.

I was able to use my airbrush that my parents gave me for Christmas this past year. It took me six months to build up the courage to try it out. I had a cake the previous week I helped a friend with and planned to use my airbrush on that cake. Around 8 pm the night before the cake was needed I realized I was missing a $3 adaptor to use the compressor. We ended up using canned air brushing and the next day I placed the order for the part and spent $12 on shipping for that $3 adapter to make sure I had it in time for Adia's cake.

You get A LOT of overspray from these machines. I was blowing blue out my nose for days. After walking into the house with a blue nose and teeth my husband found me a face mask. Make sure you do this in an area you don't mind overspray and only use airbrush colors.

Cute aren't I with that mask =)

Doing a light coat and letting it dry and going back over it is the trick. Not too much pressure or too close. You can always go darker.

I decided to keep the design pretty simple. I originally thought I'd try the royal icing brush embroidery I saw on my inspiration cake but that was a flop so I went with plan b. I will say being flexible is necessary with caking. Hey if I wanted cookie cutter I'd just go to my local supermarket. Mistakes are what give it character.

I bought a cakeboard at my local cake shop and had my hubby put little wooden pegs on the bottom to help get my fingers under it when moving the cake. Then I put wrapping paper on it and then trimmed it with ribbon.

I layered the cake using a technique called SPS (Single Plate System) that I found on cakecentral.

I took out my clay extruder and used the trefoil disc. It looks like three circles put together.

I used the disc in 2nd row 2nd from left.

When you squeeze it through and then twist the string it looks like a rope when you are done. That is what I used to hide the seem between the two tiers.

Then I placed flowers around the smaller tier and cascading down one side of that tier. I used the flower plunger set I mentioned in my hula girl figure tutorial for small flowers to decorate the smaller tier as well. A couple more flowers placed on the bottom layer and it finished it off. If I had to do it over again I'd only do the smaller flowers around the middle tier and just the cascading hibiscus flowers from the top tier to the bottom instead of having them placed around the second tier.