An Angelic 50th Birthday Party

Elise and I were super excited, and somewhat nervous, about this cake! A friend wanted a cake for her Mom's 50th birthday party on Friday. Her mom really loves angels so she originally asked for a cake that looked like a sculpted angel, either sitting or lying down. We told her we couldn't do something like that because we're just not experienced in sculpting faces yet. While we enjoy a challenge, we didn't want to just dive into something that difficult and risk having a terribly ugly cake to give her! We came up with the idea of doing 2 upright angel wings with a halo hanging off one of the wings. Our friend loved the idea so we went for it! Here's the finished product:


Each wing was about afoot tall, a foot long, and 4 inches wide. They were made of marble cake with chocolate buttercream filling. We baked all the cakes on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, we carved the cakes and covered them with buttercream and marshmallow fondant. On Thursday night, we added all of the marshmallow fondant feathers and the gold dust.

To make the longer feathers, I just cut them out freehand with a pizza cutter. The petal veiner I used on the tulips worked perfectly for feathers so that was nice! The larger feathers were cut with an Easter Egg cookie cutter I have. The halo was made out of gum paste and painted with the gold sugar dust dissolved in clear alcohol (no, we didn't need a cocktail that night, this is normal practice).

We're happy with the way this cake came out, especially considering this is the tallest and thinest cake we've made so far! When you make something this shape, you're really fighting with gravity the whole time so it's all about handling the cakes gently and avoiding potholes in the road when you deliver it!

Next cake on the list: my birthday cake! Get ready, it's gonna be awesome!