Wilton Cake Decorating Course 3, Class 4

The Course 3 final cake challenge was to make a tiered cake with either dowels or those tacky plastic pillars. I chose to stack my cake and enlisted my husband to assist in the assembly. I used 6 inch cakes and 8 inch cakes. I torted the cakes creating 8 layers total, which provided significant height. The height to width ratio is very important if you want the cake to be visually appealing. Also, when stacking with pillars or decorating with cascades of flowers, a 3-4 inch cake width difference is suggested. I went with a simple elegant cake with minimal details so the 2 inch difference was appropriate.

The cake is Dorie's Perfect Part Cake recipe (posted previously with the peach cake) amended using orange zest and orange juice to flavor the cake and icing. The filling was a mixture of strawberry jam and fresh strawberries. I used very little swiss buttercream this time around and used whole milk instead of buttermilk for the cake batter. Whole milk creates a denser cake, whereas the buttermilk really encourages the angel food like consistency. The cake was very moist and did not need any added frosting once the fondant was removed.

This was a tough but enjoyable project and I am entirely pleased with the results. I feel confident in my cake making skills and am warming to the idea of making wedding and other special occasion cakes some day. Total time spent making the cake was about 9 hours. The majority of that time was spent baking the cakes and making the icings from scratch. Not included is the time it takes to make fondant roses. I estimate I make about 8 an hour. I made 21 total.

I affectionately call this cake, my Lauren Conrad cake. Although I loath LC, my freestyle buttercream accents remind me of the monogram cakes that Martha Stewart helped make so popular a few years back. The roses were made using tinted fondant, which I then painted with a mixture of vodka and yellow sparkle dust. Entirely edible, although not recommended :)