The Golden Coral Ombre

An order was place to create a birthday cake for the infamous Old Bus Depot Markets of Canberra AU. Had to be fun, pretty, creative. All of which naturally describe OBDM. This, to most cake decorators, translates to free reign over design.

I have seen many gold and silver sequined cakes and had absolutely been dying to try the trend. As I usually do “soft” and “pale” cakes including white, silver and pastels I wanted to try something brighter. Gold sequins is on the plan. Now I’m not exactly sure how I came to the next choice of design. I vaguely remember trying to figure out what bright colour matches gold and all I could think of was coral. Coral reminds me of the fabric banners hanging from the roof of the OBDM; summer and happiness; and most of all one of my favourite candles (Rio de Janeiro by Glasshouse Frangrances). Oh, and of course there had to be flowers on the cake. I LOVE making flowers.

The Cake Blog posted a wonderful tutorial to create gold sequins. The technique was messy, sticky with lots of gold everywhere. Super happy I stumbled across the blog post as it made for a great reference whilst recreating this technique. The end result was well worth it – beautiful gold sequins cascading down the top tier.  http://thecakeblog.com/2014/06/diy-gold-sequin-cake.html

The bottom tier was a coral ombre watercolour technique inspired by lustring from Sharon Wee Creations (Wee Love Baking). A fellow cake decorating friend recommended the colour after much searching. Gel colour was diluted with rose spirit (high alcohol content) which evaporates quickly. My bench started to look like I murdered someone! The coral gel is a bloodish red at full concentration. I couldn’t get the gel to dissolve into the alcohol so I resorted to dipping the end of paint brush into the gel and mixing vigorously into the alcohol. Of course I then place the paintbrush on the bench and eventually my hands make their way onto the gel. Supposed I looked like a child with paint covering their hands except it was blood red. I have tried this technique of diluting gel into alcohol which in the past has worked blissfully. There are a few reasons I believe the dilution didn’t work so well with rose spirit. First reason – the rose spirit is cold it doesn’t really reach room temperature that I think the gel seizes. Second reason – rose spirit evaporates so quickly I struggled to make enough of the one shade at a time. Thirdish reason – vodka or white rum dilutes gel colours easier however when covering a whole tier with “water colour” the vodka/white rum takes a longer time to evaporate. This equated to the sugar in the fondant dissolving. Not good.

In the end, white a bloody looking kitchen and gold everywhere I was super pleased with the cake. More so the Old Bus Depot Markets were super happy with their birthday cake, even the Markets Manager tried to eat it before we sang Happy Birthday!

Photo from Col Ellis Photography

X Sammy

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