Stained Glass Birthday Cake

This cake was made for a 60th birthday. The order was placed by a friend which is always great because friends usually trust me to create something really stunning and pretty much allow me to design it myself.

We decided that a small cake would work best. The recipient was having a celebration with family and close friends and the cake fitted an intimate celebration.

My inspiration came from a cake made by Colette Peters. She is an American cake designer who creates the most fabulous cakes. Have a look at the cake with the red flowers on it on Collette’s Holiday Cakes page

The technique used for this cake created a stained glass effect. Having decided on the colours of the cake I covered each tier with fondant icing in silvery/pale blue colour.

Once that had dried out sufficiently I began transferring the design onto the cake. I did this by drawing the design onto tracing paper to fit the size of the cake.

I then pinned the tracing paper onto the fondant (the pins were placed where they would be hidden once the cake was finished) and used a serrated roller to press through the paper and onto the cake.

The next step was to pipe a dark brown outline of the design onto the cake. Once I had the outline I could start filling in the centre parts. This was done using piping gel. This is a sticky, fairly thick clear gel which an be used to create effects such as water or glass.

I coloured small amounts of piping gel and piped it through small bags made with baking parchment. I used a small brush to push it up to the lines of piping. It was a lengthy process because I was piping it onto the vertical edge of the cake. Although the gel is thick it would have run if too much was added.

The coloured piping gel created a high gloss finish on the flowers, leaves and butterflies. I was especially pleased with this cake because it is the first time I have used piping gel for the entire design on a cake.