Making my first cake

My first blog post about my first attempt at decorating a cake...I'm not going to lie, it's a little nerve racking...

But here we go! So I guess I will tell you about me..I'm a journalism student at ASU and I spend most of my money and even my parent's money on food. I love food! But what I love most of all is seeing creations by pastry artists who turn simple baked goods into works of art. I love watching Ace of Cakes and Food Network's Challenge episodes so I was excited when my boyfriend's birthday came around last February...the idea popped into my head that maybe I could do something like that.

So I turned to the internet to research. I stumbled upon a little cooking website that helped me make my own fondant. It even gave me some very helpful tips on everything from coloring the fondant to layering cakes. It's been my number one resource for the start of my new hobby.

So before I even started my BF's Bday cake, I had to test to waters to see if I could even do this. I made a tester cake to affirm my learning and research and here's how it turned out:

So from what I've learned up to that point, I thought it was pretty good! I was relieved that I was successful in making a cake and covering it with fondant. Now it's time to move on to the birthday cake.

I prepared 3 batches of fondant (overkill) and went to the ABC Cake Store in Phoenix and found some fun tools and trinkets to help me out as well as fondant dye. Now it was time to make the cake!

I made two 10" cakes and two 7" red velvet cakes to layer it out. I think you're supposed to just make one cake and layer it between with frosting, but I liked stacking the two cakes together. I thought it was stronger (support wise) and more dense when it was cut open.

I took my cool white fondant, worked it to room temp. and dyed it an electric blue color. The dye made the fondant so vivid, but it took forever to color. My arms were TIRED! After that we rolled out the fondant on my Crisco covered counter and rolled it on the cake. I was pretty happy with how the base cakes turned out! Now it was time to stack them.

The stacking wasn't TOO difficult. It was just a matter of getting the layers directly stacked over each other and *hopefully* supported enough to hold each other up! With a few wooden dowels and the help of Chris M., the cake was perfectly stacked and supported. WHEW!

Now it was time to decorate. Brandon (the boyfriend) didn't give me many color options to chose from, so I did the best I could. During my Google Image Search escapades, I found a really cool cake decorated with some sort of modern circles all over it. I used that as my inspiration for the birthday cake and went from there.

Here is the final result of my first decorated cake:

So there you have it! My very first decorated cake, EVER! Everyone pretty much loved the cake and it was devoured the next day at his birthday party. I have more cakes to come, so hopefully you enjoyed the first of many blog posts!

Special thanks to my birthday cake crew for helping out with this one!