Sketch to Cake: Ralitsa Kamburova's White Christmas Cover Cake

Ralitsa Kamburova

of Delice in Varna, Bulgaria created a delightful white holiday wedding cake for the cover of our White Christmas issue of Cake Central Magazine Volume 7 Issue 5. Ralitsa’s shimmering holiday wedding cake was inspired by an elegant reindeer and sparkling, white, winter snow.

Elegant Couple

The first thing that came to my mind when I saw the picture was a couple, a deer couple. I wanted to create an elegant deer couple, as this was supposed to be winter wedding cake.

I made a few sketches, three actually. I was sure I wanted a deer couple, flowers and “snow”. I was wondering for the bottom tier if I should make it with rosette ruffles or wafer paper fringes. I was in doubt also for the couple - should it be standing on top of my cake or on the third tier surrounded by flower wreath. But when I drew my sketches I thought it looked disorderly on top of the cake, so I went confident for the flower wreath design.

I knew from the beginning I am going to have “snow”, sugar confetti snow. I made just the top two tiers, didn’t want all tiers in snow. So these were my supporting points: deer couple, flower wreath and “snow”.

I started with finding the right templates for my deer couple. I printed out the templates, cut my deer and left them to dry firmly. Then I started to make flowers and what flower is more appropriate for Christmas than poinsettias?

I made three white poinsettias and wasn’t sure if I was going to use all three of them. I was sure I wanted frosting on my poinsettias’ petals. To complete the winter look of my wreath I made fantasy ranunculus and berries.

Then I continued with the snow for my top tiers. I glued white sugar confetti and the dusting began. I used a couple of luster dusts – cosmic white (rainbow dust), pearl white (rainbow dust), pearl sheen (using Americolor airbrush) and super silver (Rolkem). I wanted to create some depth to the “snow”, shadows and sparkles. But no matter how much dust I have put on the cake, it didn’t look the way I wanted. Then I decided to add some tiny little pearls – whites and silvers. I did the top tier and was extremely happy with the result. I did the next tier also.

A couple of days after cutting my deer couple I tried them against my cake and dropped the female and she broke. So I had to cut them again I glued the broken deer and covered them with the same silver sugar that I used for my ranunculus center. I decided to choose which couple to use when I finish the cake and start to assemble it.

I chose to do the bottom tier in wafer paper fringes. I started cutting it. A lot of cutting included. Felt like it would never end.

The Sketch

I worked pretty closely to my sketch. Just didn’t know I would put pearls on the top tiers and also finished the fringes with the same silver pearls. Wasn’t sure also how much flowers I would use.

I had to make some changes to my sketch design. I had to add pearls to my top tiers and the end of the fringes to achieve the Christmassy look I wanted.

The cake was time consuming, a lot of time. Otherwise I knew how I wanted it to look. Just didn’t know I was going to cut fringes for about 12 hours. Also the pearls, as I put them in between the confetti randomly, spent a lot time doing this. And of course there was place for more and more.

I used molds only for the snowflakes on the cake board. In order to incorporate them I made them in the colors of my flower wreath…ice blue, silver and white of course. I used FMM rose cutters and FMM universal veiner for the ranunculus. I used the JEM poinsettia cutter and FMM veiner for the poinsettia petals. The most used tool was the scissors for the bottom tier is quite tall - 20 cm height and the fringes were never enough. I had to make a couple of rows several times.