Wedding & Special Occasion Cakes

Wow so I've been slacking really bad and yeah I've been hearing it from a couple people so here's a little update. Since my last post we have gone through the Wedding & Special Occasion Cakes module. That was really a lot of fun. Nothing like actually getting to sit down for a change while making gumpaste flowers and other decorations.  In this module, we did one occasion cake which we could choose anything like birthday, anniversary or whatever. The only thing was it could only be a one tier cake covered with buttercream and have some of the techniques we learned as far as piping with buttercream which included piping buttercream roses and other flowers. Then we covered a dummy with fondant (which I marbled blue) and practiced some techniques there as far as string work, filigree, and draping. Then it was on to my first Topsy Turvy cake. That was interesting and not that difficult. I need to work on my "whimsical" side lol. Overall it wasn't too bad though. I did get a great idea for later though which I might have to do. Stay tuned....though at my current posting rate that could be a while haha. After that I made my first wedding cake. That was awesome. We all made the same size cakes (everyone had to have a 3 tier cake...10in, 8in, 6in) and had to be covered in fondant, but then it was up to us how we decorated them. I made 30 gumpaste roses for mine as well as a monogram and added quilting to the top and bottom tier. That was my first time quilting so that was a little challenging and something I'll have to practice again but it didn't look too bad for a first effort. I originally was going to paint some of the diamond shapes in the quilted pattern as well as the monogram but since the fondant was a neutral off white I decided to just dust the whole cake instead so the entire cake had a nice shimmer to it (though you can't get the full effect in the pics unfortunately). In addition to the monogram on the middle tier I added some stenciling with royal icing. Overall I was very pleased with my first wedding cake.
Then we had a cake challenge over the last two days of the module. The theme was "A Day at the Beach". We were all given three cake dummies and it was up to us what we did from there. The winner of the challenge gets to design and execute the cake for our graduation in October. I'll cut the suspense...I didn't win. Oh well. I would have liked to have done some things differently with this cake but as I said many times, it is what it is. Naturally towards the end of the competition I had some good ideas but no time to do them. Maybe next time....