Hearts & Pearls Celebration Cake

This cake had a simple and elegant design with a butter cream covering instead of marzipan and sugarpaste.

I really shouldn’t write these posts in the same room as the tv. Mum is not watching her usual rubbish this evening. Silk is on which I do not usually watch but is very interesting so it is distracting me.

I could go into my work room but I might be lonely.

My client ordered this cake for her partner who did not like marzipan.

When a cake is covered with marzipan and then sugarpaste it remains pretty much airtight until consumed.

Without both layers I wanted to ensure that I created as good a seal as possible.

For this reason I covered the cake with a thin layer of sugarpaste before covering the cake with butter cream.

With this layer as a substitute for the marzipan the cake would stay as fresh as possible until ready to be eaten.

I made the hearts to go on top of the cake first so that they had time to harden.

I made the heart with the birthday greeting slightly differently. I wanted to ensure that the greeting was centred inside the heart. I piped the greeting onto rolled out sugarpaste and then cut the heart out around it.

I made two of these to allow for any breakages. Experience and late nights starting again tells me that spending a little extra time at the beginning may save a lot of time and bad language later.

Once I had filled and covered the cake with butter cream I piped the pearls around the base using large piping tubes - nos. 3 and 4.

The next thing to do was the lustrous hearts around the cake. These were dotted around the top of the cake. Because the decoration was on butter cream instead of sugarpaste I secured them with piped pearls.

Decorations stick very well to sugarpaste but can be prone to moving slightly on top of butter cream.

My Client also wanted a particular quote somewhere on the cake. I decided that it would be better if this went on the board as the greeting was on the top of the cake.

I piped the greeting around the cake board.

My client collected the cake and was really pleased with it.

I love the simplicity and elegance of this cake and the satin finish.