The daughter came to me needing both cake and party help and I was happy to help out. The original wedding was Christmas themed so the kids all wanted the Anniversary party to have the same theme. My client had seen another one of my cakes and thought the sugaring would be that perfect touch of "snow" for their gold and red color palette.
The cake is Double Chocolate for the top and bottom tiers with chocolate brownie buttercream filling and the extra tall middle tier is Lemon Chiffon with lemoncurd buttercream filling. The construction is pretty much the same as all stacked cakes. Dowels in each level to support the tier above and finished off with a dowel right down the center for stability. This is especially important due to that extra tall middle tier.
Sugaring is actually very easy to do. Once your cake tier is covered with fondant you just spritz the entire cake with water (making sure to then dry the cake stand or plate it is sitting upon with a paper towel so that the sugar only sticks to the cake and not the base). At this point I would recommend moving the cake on whatever base you have it on into a larger sized cake pan. This will catch the sugar that falls down off of the cake. I start by pouring some large crystal sanding sugar on top and gently scooping off a bit down each side, one hand scooping, the other catching and pressing onto the side. You will need to scoop some more into your hand and press it gently to the side of the cake. Even then you will have a few areas that are not covered. Just use a cake paint brush that's been dampend and re-wet the bare spot and then press more sugar there before it dries. I used a wavy trim on this cake to give it the impression of "snow drifts" at the bottom of each tier.
The middle tier also got a "snow drift" edge and I just used the paint brush to wet the trim only and then pressed the sugar onto that. As you can imagine, this makes quite the sugary mess. This is why you have the stand/base in a cake pan...to catch that excess sugar. You can re-use this to cover your cake tiers as you go.
The top tier got 3 small red sugar roses to fit it into their floral design and those were set into a small "drift" of white buttercream that had a bit of sugar sprinkled on top. The middle tier got the big gold ribbon touch to bring the cake back to the Christmas motif. This was the only non-edible part of this cake and was removed before cutting.
I was fortunate enough to meet the happy couple and find out that they adored their cake as well as the rest of the party design. That is always the best part of this job. Knowing that the person was surprised and very happy with my work.
This Monday, due to New Year's Eve, we will be featuring a NYE party plan over at Cherry but you will be able to see the rest of this party design next Monday. You can always check out what is going on at Cherry here on blogger: http://thecherryontopevents.blogspot.com/ and get tips every single day on our Facebook fan site: http://www.facebook.com/thecherryontopevents
See you next week and HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Cat
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