Pumpkin and Spice

I'm a big fan of the blog Cake Wrecks. The blog focuses on hilariously hideous professional cakes gone wrong. Ugly decorations, weird airbrushing, strange spelling mistakes... it's all there, and it's all so, so funny. It is everything I (as a professional baker) aspire not to be!

Every Sunday, though, Jen (the bloggeress), runs a feature called "Sweet Sundays". Every Sweet Sunday has a theme, and features beautiful, well-done cakes that reflect that theme. This week's theme was "The Undead Wed"- and the Goth wedding cake I made for my final project in my advanced cakes class was one of the featured cakes!

Obviously I was thrilled- not only because I love the blog, but also because my cake was featured as a good cake, and not as a "wreck"!

I thought I'd give you the background info on my cake. Our final project was to be a wedding cake. It had to have two tiers, a handmade topper, handmade gumpaste flowers, and royal icing piping. I love Halloween, and goth-y things, and since we could choose our own theme for our cake project, I decided to have fun with it. I figure I'll have plenty of oppertunities to make snowy white, traditional cakes in the future- so when it's up to me, I'll play with color, and a slightly macabre theme. Even though I was going for a creepy theme, I really wanted to keep the cake tasteful and elegant. I think this'd be a perfect cake for a swanky Halloween masquarade party.

So, it's a two-tier cake, separated by a pastillage divider (which is hidden by black and purple "dead" roses.) The fondant is tinted purple and is airbrushed to fade from black to purple. The spiderwebs are royal icing. The cake is draped with a swag of lilac fondant, tied with a fondant ribbon. I made the topper out of fondant mixed with Tyclo powder (which allows the fondant to dry hard). It's airbrushed for depth. (By-the-by, the skull's name is Elliot, and the spider is Lenore.) I had so much fun making it, and it makes me happy that people are enjoying it.