Butterfly cake

Saturday, January 1, 2011

It's a brand new year, but before I focus on January and my upcoming trip to Hawaii on the 12th, I want to post some pictures of a cake I made for the Christmas party at the fitness studio I go to. Rachel, the owner of Inner Fit Studios, knew all about my cake decorating classes and has been incredibly supportive, so I offered to bake a cake for her party. This post will have pictures from the decorating process along with recipes for the individual parts under the links.

I made a chocolate cake with raspberry cream filling and dark chocolate icing (recipe below), covered with raspberry flavoured fondant. It was topped with roses and a butterfly:


The preparations included making the roses ahead of time since they had to be dry when attached to the cake. I used leftover fondant from my bow cake and the flowers turned out beautifully! Once the flowers were made, I prepared my fondant by giving it a raspberry flavour using extract and then dyed it a deeper burgundy than the flowers. Fondant has to be stored tightly sealed or it will get hard; however, I have discovered that it is possible to revive slightly hardened fondant by using a little water and/or microwaving it in 5 second intervals. Here are six of the seven finished roses and the fondant wrapped in plastic:


Here is a close up of a rose:


I also prepared the butterfly ahead of time, but this could have been done anytime because it was really easy to make. Actually, it took a little trial and error to get it right, but when I figured out the method, it was easy. I attempted to make a butterfly using real chocolate at first, but couldn't get it liquid enough to pipe without seizing. Instead, I got a package of Wilton candy melts in "dark cocoa" to simulate dark chocolate. This stuff is great for piping because I just put some in a plastic decorating bag, stuck it in the microwave, and it came out melted! So how did I do it? I drew butterfly wings and taped them down on a cake board and topped it with wax paper like so:


The cake board made the entire project portable and the wax paper was great because it was see through and made it easy to peel the wings off after. I traced the wings using the candy melts and the only difficult part was making sure my hands stayed steady:


I could have left the piped wings out to harden, but I was impatient and stuck the entire cake board in the fridge for a few minutes. Then, I pulled it back out and propped them up using a plastic straw cut in half. The reason for this is so the finished butterfly won't be completely flat. Here is what the wings looked like on the straws:


And then I piped a head and body on top:


Once the cake was torted and covered with fondant, I attached the roses in the center with gum glue and used some more candy melts to make the butterfly stick. Lastly, I added little white fondant balls at the bottom to hide the "hem" of the burgundy fondant and here is another look at the cake:


As for the dark chocolate icing I used just before putting on the fondant, it was very thick and I had to slightly melt it to spread it. But it was really good and I would definitely use it again! Here's the recipe:

  • Dark chocolate icing
  •  
  • 1/2 cunsalted butter
  • 1/2 tspvanilla extract
  • 2 cicing sugar
  • 4 Tbspsoy milk
  • 1 ccocoa powder
  •  
  • Cream butter and add vanilla and soy milk.
  •  
  • Sift icing sugar and cocoa powder together, mixing well. Add to butter and mix well.
  •  

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About this blog

TRIAL BY SUGAR is an attempt to document the recipe hacks of an occasional kitchen elf.

My name is Aileen and although I am useless in the kitchen most of the time, I enjoy baking immensely. There is something magical about throwing together a mishmash of ingredients, adding heat, and ending up in something that is much more than the sum of its parts.

Sometimes I pick recipes that fit the items in my cupboard, other times it is the ones that come with the prettiest pictures or the most intriguing combination of ingredients. However, most of the time, an idea pops in my head and I just have to find a way to recreate it in baked form. No matter how the recipes are chosen, I seem to always need to bring them to life in a different way because I don't have all the ingredients or because something else in my cupboard desperately wants to join in the fun.

This means all of the recipes in this blog are not direct copies of someone else's work - they have all been modified slightly, a lot, or, in some cases, are completely mangled. They are faithfully recorded with accompanying commentary and photos, and are available for anyone to use!

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