Holy Buckets! My Cake in Cake Central Magazine!

Apologies if you follow me on Facebook and have already seen this, I have been on a self-imposed sugar art break so I am bit behind in posting cakes here on the blog.

This summer, I received an email from Cake Central Magazine asking if I would be interested in submitting a cake I designed for possible submission into one of their upcoming issues. I was, of course, shocked and totally thrilled to have received the opportunity. The cake had to be an original design inspired by a picture Cake Central Magazine provided,  and I would need to submit professional quality pictures of my cake to the magazine to even be considered for publication.  The turnaround time on designing, creating, and photographing the cake was very short, just two weeks I think, and submission was not guaranteed. 

Inspiration picture provided by Cake Central Magazine

I can't lie. I squealed a bit when I got the email saying my cake was accepted for submission into Volume 3, Issue 6 of their magazine.

To fit the magazine’s blue and purple theme,  sugar flowers were a given as they are my favorite thing to make.  I wanted most of the color in the cake to come from the flowers, and like the inspiration picture, envisioned flowers in various shades in blue and purple popping against a neutral background,  a creamy white fondant from Fondarific.  I worked my little fingers off to make roses, hydrangea, pulled blossoms, sweet peas, white berries, and various greenery for interest.   I wanted to highlight a couple of very full, dense arrangements that look like they draped naturally off the cake. 

Seeing the bird motif in the necklace, I went with slightly abstract hand modeled lovebirds. The lovebirds were sculpted with a 50/50 fondant and gum paste mixture.  I also echoed the bird motif on the second tier with branches that wrapped around the middle tier.

Finally, I loved the textural, architectural aspect of the picture frames in the inspiration picture, but didn't want to go too literal in the design.  I added moldings to the corners and centers of the bottom tier to add textural interest to the cake.  I painted all the accents, molding, branches, and birds, with a silver hi-liter to unify the accents and again, to allow the flowers to take center stage.

The final step was taking the pictures and getting them submitted by the deadline.  I am super lucky to have a talented friend in Kristen at Low Fat Dressing who was able to take some lovely pictures and detailed shots of the cake.  Once the pictures were sent off, there was nothing to do but wait.  Getting the email on a Monday morning saying the my cake had been feature in their magazine was one of the coolest things I have experienced and certainly one of the most unexpected since I started decorating.