Monday, October 24, 2011

Tropical flowers and elephants

With summer at an end and autumn upon us, the pace has picked  up once again.  I have noticed some evolution in the type of cakes requested of me, which for the most part pleases me greatly.  Having invested a great deal of time and money in learning the art of sugar flowers, I had been a little disappointed that these were the one thing that were not in demand.  This hibiscus cake has changed the pattern.  This is a cake I made as a thank you gift to our fitness trainer on her last day with our group.  It was my first attempt at hibiscus and cape leadwort, so I made twice as many flowers as I needed and picked the best of the bunch.
The cake itself is an organic chocolate zucchini cake filled with organichazelnut chocolate ganache and covered with organic white ganache.  I recently made another organic chocolate cake and tried to make organic fondant.  It was such a headache, so expensive and so utterly impossible to work with that I swore I would never do anything with organic fondant again!  Please note that there is nothing organic about these flowers:))
Approximately the same time I had an order for an elephant cake.  Although no flowers were involved, I thoroughly enjoyed making this one.  The original detail had been for a fully 3-D elephant standing up, but after sleeping on it I realised that I didn't have the experience, let alone the knowledge to do this.  I knew I didn't have enough time to do a trial run, so this is the compromise.  The head is solid fondant with gumpaste ears and tusks.  I think I was a bit timid with the wrinkles and folds, but in the end better safe than sorry!
My original design was to be of an Indian elephant with full parade paraphenalia, but at the last minute I changed my mind and made him an African elephant.  I loved the idea of the massive ears much more....and luckily so did the birthday girl!

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