Sketch to Cake: Sandra Spataro’s Icy Winter Wedding Cake
Sandra Spataro
of Gâteau Prestige in Gatineau, Québec, Canada created a lovely winter wedding cake for the White Christmas issue of Cake Central Magazine Volume 7 Issue 5. Sandra’s satiny, thistle, holiday, wedding cake was inspired by an icy, corseted, snow queen bride.
What drew my attention first was the feeling of an ice cold breeze coming out of the picture. The icy silver makeup wore by the bride and the non-traditional thistles in the bouquet are the two elements that caught my eyes first.
When I have an inspiration picture to start with, I always start by defining the main color from the picture, the emotion or feeling coming out of the picture, in this case it was ice cold breeze. I always pay attention to the type of flowers if there are any and finally, what is the picture’s style (vintage, modern, romantic, etc.).
I am a very analytical person, so I like to plan well my cake prior to start working on it. I have to say I put a lot of effort in defining my sketch so during the execution step, I just shut my brain from calculating everything and enjoy making it.
From there, I draw the shape I have in mind. I always try to incorporate a distinctive element when I design a cake. In this case I decided to go with a double barrel at the top of the cake to elongate the shape. I decide on some technical aspects that I see fitting with the style of the inspiration picture. In this case, although the picture inspired ice and cold, the style is still elegant, delicate and feminine. So I decided to apply brush embroidery to the tall tier.
This cake concept is true to my style. I naturally design elegant and classic cakes that have a modern touch. Sugar flowers for me is a must have! I like them realistic and well balanced with the rest of the design. That describes well my design process.
I started by stacking the cake dummies to make sure that the shape was flowing nicely. Then, I created the sugar flowers to put a color accent in the design that I wanted mostly pearl white. Then came the covering of the dummies!
Icy Thistle
Although it was my first time making the large blue thistle flower, I am fortunate that nothing happened while making the cake. Everything went smoothly and inspiration came easily with that beautiful picture I was working with.
For this cake I wanted to explore working with wafer paper. I had made some wafer paper roses before but never worked with that medium directly on a cake. I used scrapbooking punches to create lace ribbon effect to cover the board as well as trimming the bottom of a tier. I also used my Cricut Cake machine to cut some designs out of wafer paper that I modified after by cutting some pieces off with scissors as I wanted to create my own design out of it. I then pearl dusted the pieces to give it an icy look.
I also used a section of a mold to create the fondant cake border. I molded many pieces and cutted with an exacto knife the part of the piece I liked. I then glued each of the little swirls to the cake.
To make the vertical lines of fondant on one of the tier, I used my Kitchenaid pasta attachment for linguini and placed them equally spaced and aligned with an angled ruler.
I think this cake is the most beautiful I had made in 2016. It closes well the year. It represented my style as it is classic, but modern with accent of sugar flowers. I like the silver magnolia at the top that makes a nice accent to the cake. I like that the different medium used in this cake (wafer paper, sugar flowers and fondant) came nicely together to create this ‘Cold as Ice’ cake.
Beautiful