Pearls and Pink Roses
Quite often, life gives you a cup of coffee when you earnestly long for a sip of orange juice. Then eventually you realize that, it was coffee that you ultimately needed, and happily go on enjoying it. Occasionally you are blessed with these tiny little happenings, which surprise you by being in just the way you want it to be. For me one such happy event, materialized when a good friend of us, asked me to make a cake for a bridal shower she was hosting. She wanted it as a miniature wedding cake, covered with fondant, and pale pink was suggested as an underlying color theme. I was amazed to realize that finally this indeed is upon me. A two-tiered fondant covered cake and pale pink flowers, too much joy for a single day!!! I make cakes mainly as gifts to my friends and for sharing in parties, and no daring soul ever asked me to make a wedding cake or a similar multi tiered construction. I love pale pink (‘PALE’ is the word!!!) sprays of all kinds of flowers. Altogether this indeed was my glass of orange juice and topping it all, my friend so graciously left the design to my imagination. A spray of pink roses and off white pearls seemed like a natural choice to complement a delicate, pleasant and friendly bride-to-be. This was a white chocolate cake filled with raspberry liquor laced butter cream, two layers in each tier, covered with rolled fondant. Roses, pearls, and the satin ribbon like band are all handmade out of fondant. Believe me, this tiny little cake has got one long and four short dowel rods inside for stabilization. Now I realize that those huge fancy multi layered stacked wedding cakes that we see in pictures might require lumber derived from a decent size of forest to support the structure. Making of this cake altogether was a pleasant experience, nothing went irreparably wrong. I made the roses couple of days ahead, so decorating this cake was a lot easier. T, patiently rolled out many a number of pearls, and we are now blessed with a decent stock of it, which hopefully I will be using for my next –Orange Juice – project.
Here is a well working white chocolate cake recipe I used this time.
White chocolate cake
¾ cup white chocolate
4 1/2 large egg whites
1 cup milk (or water)
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
3 cups flour
1 cup plus 3 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp + 11/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
9 tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature
Preheat over to 3500F. Melt chocolate in the microwave or using a double boiler. Beat egg whites with vanilla and 3 tbsp sugar till soft peaks form. In a separate bowl combine the dry ingredients and mix on low speed to blend. Add butter, mix on low speed until dry ingredients are moistened, add milk or water and increase speed to medium. Beat on medium for 2 minutes. Scrape sides of the bowl and gradually add egg mixture in 3 batches, beating 20 seconds after each addition. Fold in melted chocolate and mix well. Pour batter into 2 greased 9-inch cake pans. Bake 25 to 35 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.
Recipe Courtesy- FOOD TV
Detailed instruction on constructing a stacked cake is available here, along with other interesting information about fondant cakes
In the past few weeks after I included my photo in the profile page, I received a couple of mails from the readers of this blog, asking me if I drew that one out my self. No, I did not, but that cake was made by me last year as a part of “The heart cake tradition” series. T “stylized” the photo using Photoshop, and for those of you who very kindly expressed interest in seeing the original, here it is….
