Ginger Soave

The elements of the inspiration photo that really grabbed my attention were the reindeer and the snow. I love winter and my creative juices started flowing immediately!

A Winter Bride

I was also a winter bride so I knew how important it was for this bride to be wowed! The bride sent me a photo of her dress, it was extremely plain so I started out thinking I would keep the cake very simple and elegant. 

I then started sketching the cake, it was 4 tiers, nothing fancy, all white, no texture or creativity. I then started adding more and more to my sketch. I remembered the bride had a simple silver ribbon around her waist so I wanted to bring that into the cake somehow. I also noticed she had reindeer on her invite so I wanted to incorporate that into the cake as well. Then I noticed that the bride had a glittery aisle-runner that she was going to walk down to meet up with her groom. And on top of that she said the little flower girl was actually going to sprinkle down snow flakes as the bride was walking down the aisle. So BAM, there is where the idea of the 2nd tier of snowflakes came into play. I was still unsure of the bottom tier other than just plain so the sketch stayed with the bottom and top tier extremely simple.

I try to follow as closely to my sketch as possible. After being on Food Network Cake Wars, and it’s very tight time constraints, it is sometimes not possible to stick completely to the sketch and improvisation is extremely important.

I used snow flake plungers on the 2nd tier and that took huge amounts of time, I was worried I would not finish in time.

I began making the cake and following the sketch to a tee. Starting with the bottom tier, I was just not impressed with how plain it was, so I decided to add some torn rice paper. I tore the rice paper as if I were tearing a sheet of paper, I lightly covered it with gum glue and pushed it into edible glitter and added it to my fondant covered cake.. HOW BEAUTIFUL! So I continued adding the rice paper starting at the bottom and working my way to the top. The next tier was super plain and I did not enhance/change that tier until the very end. The next part was the silver ribbon, I added a thick styrofoam cake board and covered that with a silver ribbon. The next tier was the snowflake tier. It took way more time than I had allowed into my design. The top tier was extremely plain as well so at the very end I added extra buttercream icing on the top of the cake and brought it down the sides a bit. I also added more edible glitter to make it look like snow. I made the reindeer out of gumpaste and used the same technique I used for the rice paper, by adding some gum glue and edible glitter.

There were complications making the cake starting from the design. I am such a perfectionist and I do way too much second guessing myself. So as the cake was being made I was starting to worry a tad that it was way too white and plain. I continued  with the cake and decided I would look at it after it was all put together and decide what to add at the end.

I felt that my original design was so plain that I had no worries on time execution, however since adding the snowflakes all over the second tier took so much time I found that I was definitely hurrying towards the end. After the cake was complete I was still not 100 percent happy with the cake. It needed MORE edible glitter! So I went absolutely crazy adding the glitter to all tiers! Once the cake was complete I was extremely happy with it.