Happy Sunday! Today brings Michele and Eric's Swirl Wedding Cake! The entire wedding palette was white and purple. I didn't get to see the whole set up, they were just starting when I brought in the cake, but it looked like they were using white as the base and purple as the accent so this cake will fit right in!

Now here is where popular "fashion" and individual taste came in to play. Michele saw, on Pinterest, a "Rose Cake". The design on a rose cake is like this one I did a couple of years ago:

But Michele doesn't really like roses all that much. She loved the idea of an all over swirl pattern but she wanted purple worked into the cake as well. When she saw my Valentine's Wedding Cake, with the little red hearts randomly placed on the cake, she knew just what she wanted...white swirls with purple swirls here or there. Because of this pattern choice butter cream was the perfect medium. And, since it is Spring and not hot outside, which could melt butter cream, I was able to grant her wish.

Now to make the cake is super easy. It's hard on the hands because of all the piping you need to do but it's not a hard pattern to recreate. Just like with the rose cake, you will be using an Open Star tip. The one you use with the Rose Cake is this one (Wilton 2110):

This tip only has a few points in the star and makes the pattern of an open rose easily. To make the swirls you want more points on the star. I use the Wilton tip #32:

You can see how there are many more "lines" when you pipe than the one you use for the rose. Perfect for the swirl pattern I wanted to achieve.

So I baked the Lemon Chiffon cake as normal and froze it wrapped in Press and Seal wrap. Then the night before I was ready to decorate it I took it out of the freezer, filled it with butter cream and crumb coated it with butter cream and let that settle over night. 

I started out by icing the top of the bottom tier after placing it onto the foil covered cake drum. I didn't want to move it again once the swirls were on the sides of the cake and take a very good chance of marring one of the bottom swirls. When you make the swirls, or roses, you will see gaps in the icing. You can either leave them there or just fill them in with your tip. 

To begin the swirls, or roses, you have to keep your tip pointed straight at the surface. No angles with this pattern. Begin in the center of where you want your swirl and circle outward, being careful not to overlap your lines. You can find a video on I Am Baker that you can watch and get a better idea of how to do this. It's super easy. 

To make the pattern look random you actually have to make it not random at all. Plot out where you want your spots of color before you even start. In this case I started out with a spot of color at the top followed by two of white. Then the next line I started with two of white followed by one of color. Then one full row of white before making one with the color in the center followed by one full row of white. Just repeat that pattern all the way around the cake. I then filled in the open spaces and piped one row of swirls around the top edge of the cake.

To pipe the top tier I decided to ice the top of the cake and then move it into place on top of the bottom tier before piping the swirls. I followed the same pattern as the one on the bottom tier making sure not to line up the patterns so that the colored swirls would look random. The last thing you need to do is wait until the icing crusts up a bit and then gently press down any points that might be standing up from your piping.

As I mentioned, the only problem with this design is that it is a lot of piping so your hands will need a rest every now and then. I did use a semi-stiff butter cream recipe so that it would hold the pattern and set up quickly. 

I loved this color palette so much I decided to put together a party plan for it. So check out the Cherry Party Blog tomorrow to see how I would dress up the wedding to go with this beautiful cake!

And don't forget to check out our Facebook Fan Site for daily tips and crafts for your Easter weekend all this week!

Cat