Duomo Cake

 A couple of weeks ago, I was asked by a coworker to make a cake for his anniversary as a gift to his wife-- he wanted the top dome of the Duomo cathedral in Florence.

For anyone who has done or seen architectural cakes before, you know it's easy to do them badly, as they require more precision than your typical cake.

Here is my rendition, with my template photo in the background:

The cake was formed from 3 6" round cakes with some sculpting.  The topper was gum paste.  There were many hand piped and painted details-- I tried to capture the spirit of the Duomo without necessarily replicating every detail, as that would have taken weeks. :)

However, I did make 8 tiny flying buttresses for the side of the topper.  I then piped on the added details like the arches on the roof.  

Because of the octagonal shape of the Duomo, I made many templates for this cake to get it as close to perfect as possible.

Happy Anniversary Fred and Amy!! :)

Lindsey's Wedding Cake!

I know I'm long overdue for a blog post.

The truth is, I've done only a limited number of cakes since starting a new job in January.  It is too much for me to work full time (and worse, 125% time when I'm also teaching at Georgia Tech) and try to take on big cake projects regularly.

However, when the right projects come around, I still take them on.

Over a year ago, when my dear friend Lindsey got engaged, we made a deal about who was doing her wedding cake. ;)

I was also a bridesmaid in her wedding, which was super fun, but I really hadn't thought through all of the logistics of trying to be in two places at once.

I started early last week making gum paste flowers...

Like these deep purple lisianthus...

And more flowers...

 Like these hydrangea...

And more flowers...

Like these ivory roses....

It is hard to know exactly how many flowers to make, even with a 'vision' in mind.  Gum paste flowers are rigid and cannot be compressed to fill spaces.  I usually make a lot of extra flowers to make sure I have what I need.

And then it takes me an extra 3 hours to arrange them, fyi.

I did the baking on Wednesday and Thursday, and started filling cakes on Friday:

Lindsey had the bottom tier chocolate with grand marnier syrup and espresso truffle filling.  Her top two tiers were lemon cake with fresh raspberry puree, chambord syrup, and vanilla swiss meringue.

I was particularly proud of this flower:

This is a two-tone purple and white lisianthus.  I've never seen another gum paste flower like it.  Probably because it was a huge nuisance.  But here it is! :) 

Here it is after being arranged into the topper, with leaves and spray roses:

I knew the ivory roses were going on the gray middle tier, which was inspired by the bride's mauve sash with lace:

The lacy leaves were hand piped using ivory royal icing.

I had the cake pretty well finished up late Saturday night for the Sunday wedding.  The rain (mostly) held off, thankfully.  Although, I have had to invest in a dehumidifier for my place because it has been so horribly humid and rainy that my sugar shoes started melting and collapsing.

But on a happier note, here's the finished product!

Somehow, I made it to everything I was supposed to!

And I had a blast celebrating Lindsey and Kyle!  Congratulations!!

And there was cake for all.

The end.