Cake Take! - Poinsettia Cake.

Before the holiday season passes, I just wanted to show off my Christmas cake. It was made as the final cake of my Wilton Fondant and Gumpaste course. I chose not to go by any of the cakes given in the course book as I wanted to make something apt for the season. The cake is the classic yellow cake filled with vanilla pudding, iced in buttercream frosting and covered with fondant. The poinsettia is made with fondant and gumpaste. I spent a lot of time figuring out how to make the poinsettia, even handcutting some of the leaves and buds and covering it with lusterdust. Finally, it was bone dry and time to assemble the whole thing and would you believe I had no clue how to do it. So now I had the sense to go online and figure out how to do it, but to my disbelief, every site I checked said that we had to wire each leaf while the gumpaste was pliable, let dry and then form into a flower by twisting the wires together. I almost had a heart attack! My uncle and family were coming over for Christmas, so there was cooking to do. We have a little tradition of baking cookies for Santa, so that had to be done! I also had to bake the cake to be decorated. I couldn't start over again, oh no!

Anyway, after a restless night , I decided to just stick the buds in a ball of pink fondant and arrange the leaves around it and glue them to the cake with royal icing. And voila! Am I proud of myself or what?! I know its not a great 3-dimensional poinsettia or anything but I sure am glad!

On this happy note, I want to wish everybody a Happy New Year and I hope the next year turns out to be great!

Mita.