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You Will Love This!

Recently I've been sharing the goodies I made for my daughter's baby shower. Her shower colors were shimmering gold, soft pink and white with succulents being the theme for our soon to join us baby girl.

This is another glamorous and delicious treat and another way to serve mini cakes.

The white mini cakes with the gold foil on them were my second try at homemade marshmallow fondant covered mini cakes. The first ones I made in varying heights to make an interesting display, with triple chocolate brownie filling. I was going to leave them white and top them with the gumpaste succulents I'd made, to co-ordinate with the main cake. They were really cute just setting them on top for the picture. I photoshopped sprinkles of gold petal dust on some to see if I'd like the results. I think I would have.

It's such fun doing projects with my daughters who live away. They tell me what they want up front, but as I'm working I text photos and we decide together what to do. We debated over whether to leave them like this or attempt my first watercolor painting with petal dusts mixed with vodka. We decided to go ahead and try. I used rose gold, gold and pink petal dusts mixed with vodka in different designs of ombre and watercolor effects.

The end effect was too intense to go with the shower color scheme. The rose gold was super dark, not soft. For a while I thought I couldn't use them at all, but they were delicious and pretty and had been a LOT of work.

When it was time to set up the shower, I had nothing to loose, so I cut each mini cake into slices. They were really elegant with the dark chocolate inside, the white fondant ringing it and the varying metallic petal dusts on the outside. It turned out that the smaller amounts of those colors worked wonderfully with the shower and in truth, they were so rich that the slices were better portions than the 2" diameter mini cakes.

I was so glad to be able to use them after all that work. I doubt I'm the only one who occasionally has things not work out the way we planned and it's fun to see that thinking outside the box can save the day!

We are being blessed with a little girl this time and it's BABY SHOWER
time!

This is the cake my daughter wanted for the shower. I have posted the
other treats I made too. The leaves and the succulent on a stalk are plastic, but I made all the other succulents and the tiny flowers out of gumpaste. I do regret our decision to try adding 24k gold foil accents to the main three succulents on the cake, which were all gumpaste. It was my first time working with gold leaf and I found my efforts much less than desirable on the succulents. I do like it on the cake though and oh is it gorgeous stuff!

To get this effect, I covered the cakes with homemade marshmallow fondant. Then I mixed vodka with bronze petal dust and painted a soft ombre on the sides. I spattered Pharaoh's Gold luster dust in places for interest. Then I filled my brush with clear vodka and "painted" around the top edges, washing the ombre down and this is the lovely result. I really like it.

I like to try my hand at baking beautiful things, but I'm self taught and don't have many opportunities to practice and learn.

My daughter asked only one thing of me when she was planning her wedding...make her another doll cake like I did as they were growing up...but this time, make it look like her wedding gown!

The lightness she said this with, almost as a passing thought of no consequence, was stunning, but I, on the other end of the phone, suddenly couldn't breathe! The doll cakes I'd made them as children were buttercream and not that great. I had been with as she chose her gown. I knew how elaborate, how delicate, how INTRICATE it was. I felt like someone had just lightly asked me to make gold out of straw, as if there was nothing to it!

It was her only request for the wedding, but oh was it overwhelming. I knew the only way to get lots of detail would be to make it in fondant. This would only be my third fondant covered cake and a HARD one.

In the end, with God's help, we had a truly lovely representation of her gown. I altered a doll pick and covered it with black fondant, let it dry, then created the bodice on it and let it dry. The cake was covered with homemade marshmallow fondant with embossing and gumpaste flowers. We used it at her bridal tea, brace yourself, THE MORNING OF HER WEDDING, her choice! And then took it on to the desert table at the reception that evening. In all, it was a truly daunting, but utterly rewarding experience.

Want a good laugh? When all was done and she was settling into her new life, we were talking about this cake. I said that though it really floored me when she asked, I eventually realized the casual way she asked was a compliment showing she had such confidence in me that I could do it. She said she said it casually because SHE WASN'T SERIOUS when she asked and never dreamed I'd do something like this!

Hysterical! Months of planning, watching tutorials, stress, prayer and it turns out she wasn't serious! Two days just to make the 544 tiny flowers alone! No one could be more grateful and affirming than my precious daughter and once the stress was over, I love that I got to do this. What an amazing thing to get to do in my life! Thank you God for making it possible because I sure couldn't have done it on my own!

We
are being blessed with a little girl this time and it's BABY SHOWER
time! Shimmering gold, soft pink and white are her shower colors. These are the mini cakes I made for the shower. I'll be posting the
other treats too.

This was my first time using 24k gold foil. Wow is that tricky/pricey stuff. The tutorials made it look so easy, but half the time, the gold that was on my brush literally disappeared into thin air during the 5" trip from picking the gold up on the brush and the cake! Poof! Still, what did stay looked amazing!

I got a collection of 6 metallic petal dusts, including chestnut. I mixed each with vodka and spatter painted on top the foil, then used edible glue to attach these awesome gold sprinkles and gold sanding sugars. I LOVE how they turned out! Under a light, they are blinding and overflowing with great textures!

These are my second attempt at mini cakes covered with homemade marshmallow fondant. The first ones had brownie centers and these are a rich white cake. They are both DELICIOUS! Even several days after completing, lightly tented to keep dust off, they were sumptuously moist and rich.

I followed Yenner's method on YouTube. The first batch didn't look as good, mainly due to my filling being too moist (despite trying to freeze them in advance - they just didn't). So now I know to mix in only enough icing to moisten and hold it's shape. Much nicer results here, but I still need more practice. I also learned you need to roll the fondant thicker to hide the DARK BROWN brownies! LOL!

They feel really cool in your hand after they've set up. Adorable little palettes just waiting for you to loose your whimsy on!