Happy Sunday! This week's cake is for a special Mom and knitter, Trish! It wasn't a big birthday for her but her family wanted to get her a cake that reflected her passion and favorite hobby, knitting. 

When meeting with a client some of the questions I ask are "what are their favorite hobbies, colors, things to do with their free time?" Even though this Mom works a full time demanding job and volunteers for everything she still loves making lots of different knitted items for family and friends. Apparently, this time of year, if she isn't working then she's knitting so her family thought it was the perfect theme for her birthday cake.

The cake is lemon pound cake with vanilla buttercream filling, covered in more vanilla buttercream and then colored fondant. The only non-edible part are the knitting needles which are just food skewers with fondant on the ends. More on those later.

This is the tool I used to make the "yarn". It's called a Fondant Extruder. See the plate with the three holes in it, that is the one I used this time. This works like a garlic press. For a large project like this one it is a bit hard on the hands so be aware that you will need to take breaks to rest them from time to time. You will also need your fondant to be softer than normal so it presses through the extruder easily. I break off about a quarter cup size fondant off the larger colored piece and warm it up for just a few seconds to soften it up. I laid out 12 inch lines of three, working my way through the roll of fondant I had colored, until I thought I had enough and then started laying them out onto the cake. 

I started from the ends and laid out a "pad" of lines on each end and then did the same in the middle. Then I began criss crossing them to build up the roll until all of the buttercream had been covered. By pressing the lines together gently I was able to pick up large "pads" of the lines to place onto the cake. A lot easier than trying to place them on line by line. After that was done I rolled out the "wrapper" piece of white fondant and laid that onto the "yarn". Finally I was able to use some lighter blue fondant to trim the wrapper and pipe the wording on with dark blue colored buttercream as well as trim the cake with this color. 

The last touch was the knitting needles. To make them I just used two food skewers. I then took a snake of light blue, white and black fondant and twirled them together. I then cut that into equal halves and rolled the pieces into balls. This makes for the marble type pattern without combining the colors. I gently stuck them onto the ends of the skewers and then pushed the skewers into the cake. 

This little cake feeds 12 easily so it made it perfect for this small family birthday dinner. Happy Birthday Trish! Hope you loved your cake as much as your family loves you!

Next week another birthday cake...this one with a Winter Theme!

Cat