Cakes by Nicola: Zebra Stripe Cake

Monday, January 24, 2011

Zebra Stripe Cake

Another cake with the dreaded purple fondant. At least there wasn't as much this time around! The lime green color was a little tricky. It is a combination of yellow and green gel food coloring....a touch more of yellow than green.

This cake was based of a picture I was given. I added a necklace and a bracelet to it because the birthday "girl" likes jewelry.

This cake was a lot more time consuming than I had anticipated. It took about 12 hours total. I made the numbers and the bow ahead of time (about 2-3 days in advance) with gumtex/fondant and had them dry. It was my first time making a bow and I'm quite happy with how it turned out. The bow is made out of three strips of fondant bent into shape. I placed some paper towel in the rungs to hold it in shape while it dried for about a day. I usually leave these types of things out for a day and then after that, store them in the fridge until I'm ready to use them.

The zebra stripes are pretty easy to make. I had bought a new rolling tool so that made it much easier. It just takes a lot of time to actually arrange them onto the cake. Plus, you really have to be careful with black fondant. If you get it wet (which you need to "stick" it to the cake), the color runs. A big problem when you are placing it onto white fondant where it will show very easily.

I learned a trick while putting the ribbon around the bottoms of the cake. It helps to "fold" up the strips of fondant and sort of roll them out while placing them around the cake. It prevents the strip from getting warped as you are trying to do it.

I used kabob sticks to hold up the numbers (they were quite heavy) and made a hole in the top to insert the candles.

The necklace and bracelet were a lot of fun to make. I took equal portions of the purple, white and green fondant and rolled them into balls to give the appearance of a rock. It really came out quite real looking.