Two Tiered Wedding Cake with Fondant Roses (TUTORIAL)

I've been dreaming of making tiered cakes for sooo long.. And I've had a few experiences doing so but never really professionally. But ever since I've started looking through pictures of tiered party cakes I've began to daydream. And daydream. And daydream. And get this unrelenting urge to sit (or potter around) in the kitchen for hours creating one of these beauties.

I made the following cake over three days although if you wanted to, it's quite possible to make it in one day. I baked the bottom tier cakes on Thursday, the top tier cakes on Friday morning, did the dowelling, stacking, rolling fondant, and roses on Friday night and put the final touches with the pearls and royal icing Saturday afternoon.

I am by no means an expert at this and being an amateur baker, I want to show that these kind of cakes aren't difficult to create at all. They're challenging, and that makes it all the sweeter once you get the results you want. I wanted to make a cake which was entirely my idea and not copied from any of the books and so I came up with this. I also wanted to start off making two tiered cakes because I wanted to take it slow.. and gradually build up skill and also because.. I mean, seriously, I have no idea how I'd manage to get a four tiered cake eaten up (not by myself.. obviously...)

This is the first time I'm writing up a detailed tutorial so please bear with me if anything doesn't make sense (ask if you're confused).. obviously by saying this I'm assuming all my readers are going to get this wonderful streak of inspiration and go off to the kitchen.. but I don't think that's going to be the case..

And so here's the tutorial:

Equipment
A cake board
Measuring cups and spoons
Two bowls
A whisk
Four cake tins (two 6" ones and two 8" ones)
Baking paper
A cake leveller
An icing turntable
An offset spatula
A rolling pin
A sharp knife
3 dowel rods
Sandwich bags
A cake fondant smoother
Toothpicks
Ribbon of your choice
Piping bag
1.5 icing tip/nozzle
Sifter
Strainer
Pastry brush
Unused makeup blusher brush


Ingredients
For the bottom tier: 
1.5 cups self raising flour
1.25 cups plain flour
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups caster sugar
4 eggs
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract


For the top tier: (identical.. and you'll have enough leftover batter to make one batch of cupcakes)

1.5 cups self raising flour
1.25 cups plain flour
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups caster sugar
4 eggs
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract


For the buttercream
50g unsalted butter, softened
300g icing sugar
3 tablespoons milk
Pink gel food colouring

For the coating and roses
1/2 cup apricot jam, boiled, strained, and cooled
1.5kg marzipan
1.5kg white fondant (ready to roll icing)
Light pink gel food colouring
Rose gel food coloring
500g icing sugar

For the royal icing and pearls
1 egg white
200g icing sugar
Juice of one lemon
One packet edible pearls (preferably white)


Procedure


For the bottom tier: 
-Preheat the oven to 180C and grease and line two 8" cake tins. Put the flour together in a bowl and mix well together.
-In a separate bowl, beat the butter until smooth and creamy. Gradually add the sugar a quarter cup at a time and beat well between each addition until sugar dissolves and mixture becomes fluffier and paler.
-Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
- Add a third of the flour mixture and beat well, followed by a third of the combined milk and vanilla extract mixture. Repeat until all flour and milk has been incorporated into batter.
-Spoon into cake tins and bake for 30 minutes on the middle rack of the oven until a wooden skewer inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.

For the top tier


-Preheat the oven to 180C and grease and line two 6" cake tins. Put the flour together in a bowl and mix well together.
-In a separate bowl, beat the butter until smooth and creamy. Gradually add the sugar a quarter cup at a time and beat well between each addition until sugar dissolves and mixture becomes fluffier and paler.
-Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
- Add a third of the flour mixture and beat well, followed by a third of the combined milk and vanilla extract mixture. Repeat until all flour and milk has been incorporated into batter.
-Spoon into cake tins and bake for 30 minutes on the middle rack of the oven until a wooden skewer inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.

For the buttercream
-Beat the butter until smooth. Add the icing sugar and beat until mixture is of a sandy consistency. Add the milk and beat until incorporated.
-Add the coloring and keep on beating for five minutes until mixture gets fluffy.

Assembling and coating the cake
-Refrigerate the cakes for around half an hour before assembling them. Refrigerating cakes makes them harder and much easier to handle.
-Split each cake into half so you get a total of four layers for the bottom tier and a total of four tiers for the top tier.

-for the bottom tier
-Place the bottom-most layer of the bottom tier on an icing turntable and with an offset spatula, spread the top with buttercream.
-Place a second layer on top and repeat until you reach the last top-most layer for the bottom tier. Do not put buttercream on top of the topmost layer of the bottom tier.
-Brush the cake with the boiled, strained, and cooled apricot jam.
-Knead half the marzipan until soft and pliable and then roll out onto a surface liberally dusted with icing sugar (trust me when I say you're going to need  a collective of 500g of icing sugar just to dust the surface- don't underestimate it! you don't want fondant sticking to the surface after you've wonderfully rolled it out). Remember to roll out marzipan to cover a slightly larger cake than the one you're actually covering. Having extra-long marzipan or fondant on your cake prevents it from folding over each other and skirting and makes for a smooth, straight finish. You can always trim the excess off with a knife (and then you have excess marzipan/fondant to make roses with!).
-Gently lift the marzipan using both hands and rest the marzipan on your wrists. and lower forearm.
-Place the center of the rolled out marzipan onto the center of the cake. Smooth down over the edges with your hands and then trim off the excess with a sharp knife. Smooth with an icing smoother.
-Brush the marzipan-coated cake with boiled, cooled water.
-Knead the fondant until pliable. With a toothpick, add streaks of the baby pink food coloring and continue kneading until color is even throughout. Roll out on a surface VERY LIBERALLY dusted with icing sugar until, again, slightly larger than the size of the cake.
-Gently lift up and place on top of the cake. Smooth with the icing smoothener. Trim off the excess and smooth again.

-for the top tier
-Repeat the steps of the layering and coating the bottom tier.

-stacking the cakes.
-Place three wooden or plastic dowel rods into the center of the bottom tier cake. Measure the height of the cake on the dowel rod with a pencil. Remove the dowel rods and trim to the size of the cake.
-Do that with all three dowel rods and place in the center of the cake forming a triangular shape.
-Lift the top tier and gently place it on top of the bottom tier.

-"ribboning the cakes"
-Take the ribbon and place it around the base of bottom tier, measuring how long it should be. Cut out the required length.
-Dab a little royal icing or buttercream on the cake where the ribbon will be placed.
-Place the ribbon around the base of the cake and make the end of the ribbon slightly overlap with the start of it. Dab in place with a little more buttercream.
-Do the same for the top tier.
-Take the makeup blush brush and dust the cake off any icing sugar.

-for the roses
-Color the leftover marzipan rose pink and shape a little bit of it into a 4mm diameter sausage. Keep the rest in a plastic bag or tightly wrapped in foil to prevent it from drying out.
- Take the sausage and cut off the ends. Then cut the remaining sausage into six slices with a 3mm width each.
-Take a plastic ziplock or sandwich bag and open the sides to make it into a foldable plastic folder. Place the six slices evenly spaced out inside the sandwich bags, with the rounded sides facing away from you and the flat sides facing towards you.
-Place the top half of the sandwich bag over the bottom half and press down and flatten each slice with the base of your thumb (no, that isn't the part of your thumb right under your nail but the base of the thumb by the wrist).
-Then run your actual thumb around each piece to smoothen the edges.
-Take the smallest petal and roll it around on itself so it curls.
-Then, take the next smallest petal and place it around the rosebud. Keep on working your way outwards using slightly larger petals each time until you use up the six.
-Repeat to make five more roses.
Place around the cake as you see fit. Or do it like I did: two on top, one in the middle, and two at the bottom.

-for the royal icing and pearls
-Beat the egg whites till the soft peak consistency, add the sifted icing sugar and beat in until incorporated. - --Add the strained juice of half a lemon and beat in.
-Add the color with a toothpick and beat in until smooth and not too runny.
-Prepare a piping bag with the 1.5 nozzle and spoon in the royal icing. Secure the piping bag.
-Holding the piping bag at a 60 degree angle to the cake, pipe around 5 or 6 round pearls onto the top of the cake in front of the roses.
-Don't pull the piping bag away as soon as the icing starts coming out of it otherwise you'll end up with sharp studs instead of pearls. Instead, wait till the pearl is formed and then gently release.
-Once you finish the pearls on the top tier, ice the top of the bottom tier (you'll only be able to have access to the outer edges of it due to the top tier placed above it).
-Once that's done, with your fingers, gently add the edible pearls on top of each pink royal icing pearl. You'll have to work fairly quickly because the royal icing hardens fairly quickly and crusts if you apply too much pressure.

And you're done! As you can tell from the pictures, I'm having issues getting the icing completely clean and smooth without cracking a bit. First, I need to knead the colour in a lot more so little white streaks don't show. Plus, I also need to not put SO much icing sugar on TOP of the fondant when I'm rolling it out. It's important for it to be under but not on top. But I had to re-knead the fondant around three times before I could lift it without it breaking. I had to keep adding more icing sugar for that.

Mini Rose Cakes

I haven't had a chance to blog in a while- I've been extremely busy with university work. Last week, we held a Model United Nations conference for high schools around the UAE. We had planned for the event for months and last weekend was the weekend that all our efforts bore fruit. I am extremely happy with the way things turned out- we all are. Everything was fabulous and ran so smoothly. I was Director of Logistics and Event Planning which meant I had a whole lot of running around to do the entire conference. I'm proud to have catered for the coffee break through Spontaneous Euphoria Baking and Dessert Services. I spent two days preparing around 200 cupcakes and was up till 3AM the night before the conference icing all the cupcakes. My mechanical piping machine was getting stuck for some reason so I had to resort to that which I fear most- a plastic piping bag. I'm glad to say I have overcome my fear- and LOVE using a plastic piping bag. You have a lot more control over the way the final outcome looks.

While the opening ceremony speeches were taking place, my friend and I snuck out to set up the table for the coffee break. I would like to ask myself why I didn't take a picture of everything just as soon as we finished setting it up because literally three minutes into the coffee break, EVERYTHING was gone. The only things left were some biscuits and like six mini cupcakes. Which then were all eaten up in the subsequent seconds.

Anyways, I sort of went on a fondant phase two weeks ago.. and I think I'm still on it.. I bought a few cake decorating books from New York City (which weighed a TON) and have been obsessing over every design in every book. One thing I cannot seem to master though is STIFF ROYAL ICING. I bought a flower nail, I bought the parchment, I'm holding my hand at the right angle, everything! but the icing isn't thick enough. And when I pipe on the flower nail, I can't lift the piping bag easily without smudging whatever is on the flower nail or dragging the parchment up with me (yes I stick the parchment on the nail with a little buttercream or icing).  SIGH. So these mini cakes were supposed to have those royal icing flowers on them.. but since that didn't work out, I made roses out of marzipan. These are suprisingly SO easy to make. I could make tons.


I wish I had a picture of what the cake looked like from inside. There were four layers, two pink and two plain vanilla- alternating.

This was another cake which required the same royal icing- but which didn't work out. So I made fondant daisies..

I'm still a bit messy when it comes to fondant.. the fondant seems to overlap and when I lift it up to smoothen it out it creases a bit. But I'm learning!

On how I made a three-tiered cake by hand.

Wednesday evening and I'm baking a cake. A five layered cake. But a small cake. 5 inches in diameter. It was my idea of a little masterpiece. Two chocolate layers sandwiched with a rose flavored layer in between and flanked with  two vanilla cakes. And iced with a pale pink frosting. And LOTS of Maltesers..

Let's just say the Maltesers never made it to the cake... because they ended up somewhere else.

Right when I was creaming the butter for the frosting, my trusty 15 year old Kenwood mixer broke down. Somehow. The beaters won't beat.. and when I place it in flour or butter it makes an extremely strange wheezing sound. Sigh. I guess it's time to invest in a more high tech mixer. As a result, I couldn't beat the frosting that well AND I ran out of icing sugar.. 1 kg of it. Yep. So the cake never fully iced.

halfway done icing

But I am happy with it. Although it needed more icing to cover all the sides, it looked very neat. The flavours were the best part. And I'm extremely glad that I FINALLY attempted refrigerating a cake before and after crumbcoating it. It works like magic.

Anyways, I cut the cake into a top three layers and a bottom two.. just to make it easier to cut.. and so that I feel less guilty when eating it.

And ANYWAYS, next thing I knew it was Thursday and I was in the kitchen trying to make four vanilla cakes. Sixteen eggs, four cups of butter, eight cups of sugar. A health freak's worst nightmare. But I wanted to make a gradiented three layer cake. YES! But ohh, I forgot one thing... I didn't have a MIXER! What was I to do? Keep everything back in the fridge and abandoned my cakey dreams? NO. I'd mix it by hand of course... why, I'd get an arms workout! No need to head to the gym! I can work out in my kitchen! (And obviously have it come to zero benefit since I've started eating buttercream with my bare hands).

And yes, I made the cakes by hands. Thank the Lord though that it was only two batches of the vanilla cake that I needed to fill all the tins I had prepared. So yes, no sixteen eggs, no four cups of butter, and no eight cups of sugar.

And so this was the initial idea for my cake (although don't you find that sometimes - or MOST times- the idea you started off with always gets changed a little?): Three vanilla cakes, each of a different size, each halved and filled with chocolate buttercream and each covered with fondant. The largest one would be rose pink, the middle one pale pink, and the smallest one white. I'd tie a ribbon around each cake and make some lacey designs with royal icing.

Most of that happened. Up until the royal icing, the cake was going just as I had planned. But then I had to make royal icing. And without a mixer, that didn't work. And so all my ideas of completely abandoning a mixer and reverting to the "authentic" and "rustic" way of baking were shelved. How would I whisk egg whites to firm peaks?! I hadn't even thought about that. I had been too caught up in my daydream of being Henry VIII's pastry chef for his wedding to his seventh wife. Yes, I realize that one must have one's head on one's shoulders, and one's feet on the ground.

Yes, everyday IS cake day. 

So the royal icing was thick. And the cake was too narrow for lacey designs so I decided to make dots all around it. Thank God I had the good sense of first practicing with the royal icing on parchment paper. The mixer was sticking to the nozzle of the piping bag and not staying on the parchment paper/cake. (ooooh did I tell you that I finally conquered my piping bag fears? I no longer only use the mechanical kind!) :) So yes, the idea of dots were abandoned. But I am happy with the cake.

So here are some of my little words of wisdom about baking:
-You don't have to have a mixer. You actually feel quite accomplished once you bake something with your bare hands (and maybe a spatula).
 -Never fear piping bags. And no matter how much of an expert you think you are with them, always practice the pattern you're aiming for first on some scrap baking paper.
-Refrigerate cakes before coating with fondant.
-Yes, it's wonderful to deviate from the recipe and be creative, but sometimes these cookbook writers do talk sense. For example, when they tell you to coat a cake with boiled APRICOT jam before placing fondant, then use APRICOT jam. Do NOT use strawberry jam because then you know what.. you're going to end up with dark blotchy bits under your pearl white fondant. BAD IDEA. (Thank God the blotchy bits of my cake weren't that visible!)
-When lining a cake with ribbon, melt some white chocolate and sporadically brush tiny amounts all around the edges of the cake, then line the ribbon around. If making a tiered cake, start and finish the ends of the ribbon in a straight line.

The ravaged cake.