4th of July Pinwheel Cake

HAPPY 4th of JULY USA!

I hope everyone out there has a wonderful holiday filled with family and friends, fun and fireworks! We sure are!

In order to celebrate this holiday for our family I decided a special cake was in order. And, as always, I decided to try to extend my caking knowledge at the same time by learning a new technique and pushing myself a bit more!

Since I had to learn a new technique to make the pinwheel design I had decided upon I thought I'd share all of those steps with you! Step One is pictured below:

Step One: Blue square and stripes

First I had to make a square of colored fondant that was mixed with tylose so it would dry faster. I made it a bit smaller than I wanted to end up with since I knew I'd have to roll it out again after I added the stripes. The stripes were cut from white fondant with a ruler. Then I brushed just a bit of water on the back of each stripe and laid them out on the blue fondant. I let this set up for a minute then carefully rolled the piece out again. You have to be very careful to roll it out a bit in each direction, horizontally, vertically as well as corner to corner in order to preserve your white fondant design and not distort it too much. You also do not want to roll hard enough that you press the white design all the way through your colored fondant. You want the back of the piece to be one solid color.

Step Two: Trimming and cutting

The cake I made is a 6x4 so I knew I wanted the pinwheel to hang over just a teeny bit so I trimmed the final square to 6x6 then cut in the fold lines for the pinwheel. These are cut all the way through for folding later on when it sets up enough to do that. Then the piece is left to dry for a few hours. The trick is to let it set up enough that it will roll without collapsing right away but not so set up that it cracks. So check it about once an hour till you reach that stage.

Step Three: Folding and Supporting

The final step before allowing it to dry completely is folding the pinwheel into it's final shape. If you have ever done this with paper then you already know how to fold it up. The only difference is that you are not hooking the fondant onto the fondant but rather, folding the tips down so they can be used to adhere the rolled pieces to the flat pieces with a bit of water. If you don't know how to fold a pinwheel you can do what I did and find a video on Google. They are easy to learn how to make. Once the rolls where adhered to the flat corners (I could let go and they didn't come back up again) I used rolled up plastic wrap (I use Press and Seal) to make round supports for the rolls so that they wouldn't collapse before dry. Then I let it dry for 24 hours. I then removed the supports and let it dry for another 12 hours before placing it on the cake.

Step Fou: Placing the Pinwheel on the Cake

To place the pinwheel onto the fully decorated cake I made a base out of the same color of fondant with tylose that I used to make the pinwheel out of in step one. I made the circle a bit smaller than the center of the pinwheel, about 1-1/2 inch, stuck a small dowel into it to look like the "stick" of the pinwheel and then set it onto the center of the cake. I then brushed the top with a bit of water and placed the pinwheel on top. I gave it a few minutes to set up then used red frosting to make the "button" in the center.

This was so much fun that I'm now planning a cake with lots of mini pinwheels on it for Easter next year! Lots of different colors and decorations, of course!LOL!

I hope you all have a great week. Those cupcakes I told you about last week are up for me this week. I'll post final photos of how those turn out on Sunday! Have a very Happy 4th of July!

Cat