Lace Cake

This cake is a design from a Colette Peter’s book. I bought the book about a year ago specifically to make this cake and just never got around to it. Thanks to being unemployed, I’ve finally found the time!  I’m also glad that I waited a year to do it so my skills were a little stronger.  It is a beautiful cake but took a lot of patience.  I would love to make this cake again and I think it would be beautiful as center pieces at a wedding or a cake for a baby shower or classy birthday party.  Piping is something that I really need practice with so that is another reason why this was a good cake to work on.  It didn’t turn out flawless, but I was pretty happy with it.

The flavors are vanilla cake with an orange puree and chocolate orange filling.  Then it is covered in a Meringue buttercream and fondant.  The lace is made from royal icing.  Which for the most part I finally got the consistency right.  At first it was a little too stiff but I added some water and it worked out ok.  I still hate royal icing though…

I tried a new brand of fondant for this cake.  I noticed at the craft store that Duff, owner of Charm City Cakes and star of Ace of Cakes has come out with a line of cake supplies.  They have a lot of cool things from pans to cake tattoos to fondant.  I thought I would give his fondant a try.  When I first opened the fondant it seemed really hard and I thought I was going to be really disappointed, but I microwaved it for ten seconds and worked for a minute and it soften up very nicely.  The fondant was really easy to work with, it had a nice stretch and rolled out beautifully.  I had no trouble covering the cake with this fondant.  It tasted great too, very fresh and buttery.  Overall it is an excellent product.  What I didn’t like about it was the price!  It is way too expensive!  The fondant retails for $19.99 for two pounds.  Ten dollars a pound is crazy.  To put it in perspective, I can get Satin Ice, a professional grade fondant for about $2.00 a pound.   The only problem is I have to order it online.  If I didn’t have a 40% off coupon and money left on a gift card I don’t think I would have even tried it.  Even though it was a good product to work with, I won’t use it again because of the price.