A fun and festive centerpiece to a spring dinner party was the customer request and I'd like to think I delivered with this palette knife painted tulip cake.
"The cake was AMAZING. That was the most delicious cake I've ever tasted!"
I spend a lot of time on Pinterest looking at ideas for cakes, cookies, dinner...you know, finding 8,000 things to pin and never make. Lately, I've been fascinated by elaborately decorated cakes where they use a palette knife to apply the buttercream. Last year, I made a Cinco de Mayo cake where I brushed on the decoration so moving to palette knife has been my next challenge. When I had a customer give me free reign to create her Easter cake, I grabbed the opportunity to try it out.
A Colorful Surprise Inside
Inside the cake are 4 layers of vanilla cake, each a slightly different shade of pink to give the ombre effect when cut open. When I baked the cake, I hadn't decided on the decoration for the outside yet. In case I went with a simple, elegant decoration, the inside needed to be something eye catching.
It's A Lot Harder Than It Looks!
With this cake, I knew I would need to practice first. I ordered a knife set on Amazon, thawed out some American buttercream, and spent hours practicing on a plate and got nowhere. All my flowers ended up looking messy, smushed together, and not layered. I had set my expectations really high by trying to mimic the cakes I had seen on Pinterest, forgetting that those cake artists have spent way more time working on their skills than me and my one afternoon.
I kept with it, not willing to give up the idea of the palette knifes. I figured having a day or two to think about it, a chilled cake canvas to work on, and motivation to get a cake to my client would be just what I needed. Three hours later...a lot was learned. American buttercream is not the way to go with this technique. The frosting is just too soft a base to apply layer to without damaging the underlying foundation work. I repeatedly chilled the cake as I worked on it but it just wasn't cooperating. With frustration setting in, my attitude change from "I'm going to get this perfect" to "I need to get something on here and finish". And that attitude change helped me loosen up, quit trying to micromanage each knife stroke, and it started to come together. This was a lot of fun to experiment with and I'm definitely going to keep practicing because I think there is a lot of potential and it is a style that I think fits my personality as well. Plus, I should probably put my studio arts minor to good use.
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