Shades of Love (knock-off) Valentine's Day Cake Tutorial

I love William Sonoma catalog. So many neat products and inspirations. A highlight for me this winter--a beautiful Shades of Love Valentine's Day cake!

After bending the catalog corner and going back to stare at this six inch $100 cake, nine or ten times, I knew there was really only one thing left to do... Make the darn thing myself.
So that's what I set out to do, as simply and cheaply as possible.
Here's my version of the Shades of Love cake. Hope you enjoy.


To make this cake you will need:

• 1 box of white cake mix
• Ingredients to make one batch of butter cream icing or 1 can of store bought white icing.
• Pink food coloring: I used AmeriColor 114 Deep Pink
• Red food coloring: I used AmeriColor 119 Red Red 
• 1 quart container of my FAVORITE vanilla Whip'n Ice (found in refrigerated section at any bakery supply) or Wilton's butter cream incing or store bought icing.
• Ateco #864 decorating tip.
• 6" cake pan

I only own one 6" cake pan (A vintage pan of my grandmother's from the 1930s!). So I just used it four times to make my four layers. I greased and floured my cake pan for each layer and added a circle of parchment paper to the bottom of the cake pan each time to prevent the cake from sticking.

Make the cake mix according to the directions on the box. I made the version with egg yolks since white cake mix does give you a "no-yolk" option.


Add small amount of pink food coloring.




Measure a generous cup of batter and pour into your prepared cake pan..


 My 6" cakes took 21-23min at 350 degrees.These cakes are small, so keep a close eye on them


Add more pink food coloring to your batter.




Wash and prepare your pan again. Pour in a generous cup of your next layer of batter to be baked. Repeat baking instructions.


Add more pink food coloring to the batter.


Wash and prepare your pan again. Pour in a generous cup of the next layer of batter to be baked. Repeat baking instructions.



Now it's time to add the red food coloring.




Pour the rest of your batter into the prepared pan and follow baking instructions above.


Allow all layers to cool. Remove parchment paper. I placed mine in an airtight container and refrigerated them. **tip** Cold cake is easier to decorate.  Prepare butter cream icing, if making your own.

Butter cream Icing
1/3 cup soft butter
3 cups confectioners' sugar
3 tbsp. cream
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

Blend together butter and confectioners' sugar. Mix in cream and vanilla until smooth. I left the butter cream icing white. Or Wilton's recipe is fine to use here too.

Time to start putting our pretty cake together. Starting with the red on the bottom, stack the layers, spreading butter cream in between each layers. After stacking all four layers, run a wooden kabob skewer down the center of the cake and trim the top of the skewer so you do not see it. This anchors your cake and keeps it from sliding. You can spread any extra butter cream in a thin coat around the outside of your cake.  Refrigerate your cake for 1 hour to allow the butter cream to firm up.


Next, make the Whipn' Ice and tint it light pink. If using store bought icing, remember you will need quite a bit. The rosettes take a lot of icing.



Skim coat the entire cake with the light pink Whip'n Ice whipped icing. Remember, you're going to cover the entire cake with rosettes so this doesn't have to be pretty.
 

Put 1/4 of your icing in a pastry bag with a #864 tip and pipe rosettes on the top and sides like so. Literally just squeeze the bag while making a circle and then stop squeezing. Wink. You can do a few practice runs on a plate to get the feel for this.




Just like we did with the cake batter, your going to add more pink food coloring to your icing and repeat this process for the next ring of rosettes. (Making sure you wash out and dry your pastry bag between colors).




Add more pink food coloring to your icing and add yet another ring of rosettes to your cake.




Add the red food coloring to your remaining icing and pipe your final ring of rosettes.




Stand back and admire your amazing creation.
Okay, enough admiring. Time to slice this baby and eat it!






Mmmmm, mmmm! Here comes the fork! Grin.


This cake is so most and smells so good, I can hardly stand it!




Any Valentine would be delighted to partake in a bite of this cake.


Enjoy!

~The Lemonista

Linked up to:
Feathered Nest Friday
Tip Junkie, Tip Me Tuesday
Savvy Southern Style
My Romantic Home

Garden Cake Tutorial

This is one of those desserts that is sure to dazzle people.
 
The cute colorful marzipan vegetables against the black Oreo cookie dirt simply delight the eye.

This cake is fantastic for a summer garden party or darling as a Peter Rabbit cake for Easter.  You can scale this cake to any size you wish and be as basic or decadent as you desire with the decorations. Here's a large version of  a garden cake I made for my daughters 5th Birthday.

Please don't be intimidated with this cake. If you can work with Play-Doh you can make these little vegetables, and you have my tutorial to help you every step of  the way, so let's go to Garden Cake School 101!

Garden Cake 101
Bake any cake you wish and allow cake to cool.  A carrot cake with cream cheese icing is especially fun for this cake, but I'm using a yellow cake today with custard filling and whipped icing.


Cut 9"X13" cake in half and stack with your favorite filling between the two layers.


Just look at that extra filling! YUM. I almost ate it myself but took pitty on one of my little helpers.

Frost cake

Pipe a decorative trim if you wish.

Add pre-made fence pickets to cake. I rolled out white fondant icing on parchment paper and used a ruler and a knife to cute my pickets.  I let them sit out for a couple of days to dry hard, but you could pipe them out of royal icing, or even bake them out of sugar cookie dough. The cake is still adorable without the pickets, so feel free to skip this step all together.



I tucked my pickets into the icing bottom trim and stick against fresh moist icing.








Remove icing from Oreo cookies and crush the cookies in a food processor to the consistency of dirt. CAREFULLY and neatly spoon Oreo cookie dirt on top of the cake.  You don't want to get any black dirt on the sides or piped edges of your cake.








Using a #133 tip (great for making grass or hair), pipe grass around the top and bottom of cake. (Optional)





Pipe decorative vines growing up the fence and embellish your cake with royal icing pansies and bugs found at Fancy Flours. (Optional)





I piped a few leaves on the vines.




Using a fork, sow your garden rows.  I like to do a grid, with my rows changing direction in each grid.




Apply your marzipan vegetables to your garden. (See vegetable tutorial below)  I like to group my vegetables in each grid, but you can arrange them any way you wish.




We added a sugar butterfly fluttering over the garden. Click here to see my post with sugared butterflies.

Stand back and look at your amazing creation.
*It was a humid rainy day when I made this cake so my pickets started to get a little wobbly/soft. I piped little dollops of frosting behind eat picket to keep them standing straight. You would not need to do this if using royal icing or sugar cookies.

Boxed up and ready to go to my daughter's teacher for Teacher Appreciation week.


Marzipan Vegetable Tutorial



These little vegetables are so fun to make. There really is no wrong way to do these. Working with marzipan is much like working with Play-Doh, only a little stickier. I found that keeping my hands slightly damp helped keep the marzipan from sticking to my skin. I also found that washing my hands with each color change with super helpful. I used gel food coloring to tint my marzipan. Remember marzipan is made from almonds, so if you have someone with a nut allergy, try making your veggies with fondant icing.

I used one tube of marzipan for the size cake I'm making today. If you are going to do a larger cake, then you will need two tubes of marzipan.


Purple Cabbage or Lettuce
Tint some marzipan with your food coloring but don't blend the color all of the way. Use purple for cabbage and light green for lettuce. You want some white spots left to make the leaves look lifelike.


Roll some marzipan in a small ball.



Pinch little pieces of marzipan between your fingers to shape petals


Apply petals in a circular pattern around your ball until you get your desired size cabbage.








Carrots
Tint some marzipan orange.


Roll with one finger to make a carrot shape.


Using a toothpick or a blunt knife, score lines around your carrot.


Poke a whole in the top of your carrot and add a little green marzipan leaf.




CornTint marzipan golden yellow and roll into shape of an ear of corn.


Using a knife mark you ear of corn with a grid pattern to make kernels.


Pinch small amount of green marzipan to make two leaves and apply one to each side of your ear of corn.




Tomato & Pumpkins
Tint some marzipan red and roll into a tiny ball. (Use orange for a pumpkin and make your ball larger)

Puncture a little hole on top and make 5 little lines. (Score the lines from top to bottom if making a pumpkin).

Roll little squiggle stems out of green marzipan and push them into the top of your tomato.


Watermelon
Roll an oval out of red marzipan.

Roll out a flat circle of green marzipan and wrap it around your red oval ball.






Cut your watermelon in half and add black seeds with a black food color marker (found at most art and craft or cake decorating stores).




Peas & Frogs
See my marzipan cookie tutorial to learn how to make cute little peas and frogs! The peas photographed here are cookie dough. You'll be using marzipan candy and making the peas a smaller scale for a garden cake.


Your creativity is the limit with other fruits and veggies you can make. I like to make my veggies the night before I decorate the cake. Then I store them in an air tight container until I am ready to use them. It's a great project to work on while watching a movie or favorite show. 

Enjoy!

~The Lemonista