In the middle of a freezing cold autumn we created this fun and tropical inspired flamingo cake! It definitely brightened up our day. Smoothed with pale pink passion fruit ganache and adorned with a flurry of ice and blush pink candy feathers, pink macarons and soft blush roses this flamingo inspired cake is pretty fancy!
For the gorgeous textured ‘feathers’ on this flamingo cake we created custom coloured mixes using Wilton Candy Melts in pink and bright white. This had to encompass two different light tones of pink. We added a few of the melts to the standard pink for the slightly darker tone. Then for the pale edible brush strokes we combined half and half of the pink and white. Using Wilton Candy Melts made the feathers a lot more durable than if we used chocolate. It may have been cold weather, but we needed to think about in car heating too. Chocolate is great to use, but we didn’t want to risk the feathers softening and melting at all.
By the way… we have a tutorial on how to make those brushstrokes!
Pretty in pink flamingo cake!
We used a pale pink modelling / gum paste (fondant with CMC powder added) to create the chic flamingo head and neck. The neck was kept a little shorter to keep the whole piece nice and stable. This also had to be created a fair few days in advance so that it had enough time to set well. We freehand sketched a template on parchment paper making sure it stuck to a good size / dimension. Facial features were added using black fondant and sweet little blushed cheeks from some pink edible petal dust!
The overall cake had to stay pretty pale in colour, but getting a few different subtle tones in helps add interest. For this we created the flamingo head and board out of the same blush pink, but kept the ganache on the cake a shade or two paler. We then added different shades of light pink around the cake; making sure each element was kept a couple shades lighter or darker.
The Lemon & Passion Fruit macarons nestled amongst the feathers and roses were in our popular blush pink tone. If they were any paler they would have began to look peach-like due to the slight caramelisation when baking (it adds a yellow tint to them). To incorporate this colour we made the darker feathers to almost match.
The pretty pale pink roses dotted around this flamingo cake were from The Orange Grove flower shop in Hessle. They were quite large and full with a few shades of pink in them. These added a luxuriously soft and ruffled look sat amidst the macarons and candy feathers!
This was such a pretty cake (and oh so pink) that we didn’t want to see it leave us. It did, however, need to fulfil it’s cake destiny so off it went to be the toast of the party!
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