Sometimes the most fun cakes are the most straight forward to design and construct. Here’s a bright and simple birthday party cake that we created featuring a hand-made and edible Hello Kitty perched on top! We loved creating this sweet design plus the fairly plain cake left us with a great canvas to work on an adorable gum paste / modelling paste Hello Kitty character happily clutching a fondant / sugar paste balloon; perfect for a lively get-together!
Our design requests for this treat included an edible Hello Kitty figure, a white iced vanilla and strawberry cake with a white chocolate ganache, the colours pink and yellow and generally a need for an un-fussy but fun look.
We added the cute little balloon to add a sweet playful look and feel to the cake. This was definitely one of our favourite things about the whole design, but we do love that the edible confectioner’s glaze painted onto the surface created a realistic shine!
Our little Hello Kitty was created using custom coloured gum paste / modelling paste and by carefully studying lots of images from official merchandise. It’s important when re-creating well known characters to pay close attention to the positioning of eyes, noses etc (an art school essential is being told that the ’empty’ space is an equally important part of the work). If it helps sketch out a character on grid paper while studying the subject and mapping out the distances between facial features.
To re-create this cake with a different spin some fabulous ideas would be to add white on white swiss dots around the sides with royal icing, make tiny fondant gifts to sit around the character’s feet or to create a large bundle of bright balloons to nestle into Hello Kitty’s paw!
We based this design loosely on a stunning gold sequin gown in Elie Saab’s A/W 2012 collection. We simplified the design with plain ivory tiers and large sugar magnolia flowers featuring gold dusted centres. Originally, sugar Juliet roses were to feature perched upon each tier, however, we thought that a more structured floral would work better and also add a more sleek look to the end design.
The ‘sequin’ look can be a fairly time consuming and costly process, but it’s certainly worth it if you have the time, resources and patience and if you’re looking for a show-stopping technique! We lost count of how many large bottles of edible gold paint it took to paint this.
We created the magnolia flowers ourselves, as with all of our florals. To begin the process of flower making we always sit down and analyse photographs making notes of texture, sizing, curve, petal count and colour. There are times, however, when a little creative licence is needed so that a particular bloom works with a design rather than against it. These white magnolias were inspired by the Milky Way variety, but instead of the deep pink centres we created them out of ochre gum paste and stamens dusted gold.
This is easily one of our favourite designs in the collection. It is a lovely clean design with detail featuring only on the front of the cake. We created a hand quilted frame inlay of white fondant brushed with glimmering lustre dust before applying pieces of ochre coloured fondant mouldings around the edge and finally hand painting this feature with edible gold paint.
The cake displays such a rich design from just the frame-work alone that we decided to keep the florals to a minimum. Originally, we had sketched this design with roses, hydrangeas, apple blossoms and cherry blossoms; however, we finally chose to stick to simple frosted fantasy berries, sugar leaves, and hand-made ruffled pink cherry blossoms!
The little pops of bright pink from the sugar cherry blossoms add another dimension to the cake and help liven and brighten up the white and ivory tiers. Utilising a more simple floral style helps keeps the main focus of the cake on the ornate gold frame as well as keeping the ye moving up and down the design!
Our entire collection encompasses inspiration from textural fashion (sequins, ruffles, quilting) and antique French elements found in lavish interiors (such as mouldings, scroll-work, and hand painted gold and silver touches). We’re, our course, excited to reveal the remaining cakes from the collection so keep checking back for more news and photographs!
