Elegant Square Cake

At Georgia Tech, we're mostly engineers, and there aren't too many women around.  So, in the Mechanical Engineering department, we have a graduate women group to help us meet the other women in the department, and we do a lot of social events and seminars and lunches. :)

Last week, we brought in a female Ph.D. from Sandia to give a talk and meet and mingle with students and faculty at Georgia Tech.  After her talk, we had an informal lunch where the other women grad students could ask questions.  Long intro, but I was asked to bring a cake for the lunch.

To spice things up a bit, I made my first square cake!  The cake was a yellow cake with a ganache filling.  The ganache was garnished with fresh, sugared strawberries.  The outside was covered in standard vanilla buttercream, then I covered the cake in fondant.

I am happy to say that my fondant rolling skills are getting much better-- I actually covered this cake in one shot and in a reasonable amount of time!  No wrist cramps from rolling!  I guess my PVC pipe rolling pin is working out. :)

I cut out a light gold ribbon (Tech's colors are white and gold), and added the gold bow.  I used some tissue to help the bow hold its shape while drying.  Then, I piped a white swirling pattern over the rest of the cake.

The bow, up close, while drying.

The pattern ended up being a little smaller and more intricate than I was planning, so it took a little longer, but overall, this cake went very smoothly.  Oh, and the taste got rave reviews, so that makes me happy.  I'm paranoid about my cakes tasting bad or being dry. 

On an unrelated note, I start Wilton Course 3 this week-- yay!  First class is on Thursday.

Also, for the summer, I'm considering applying to be a home based business, so that I could legitimately take on some cake orders on the side... Still figuring out what all is entailed, though.  Every state/ county is different. 

Have a great week, everyone!