It's All The Rage

Ombre.  It's all the rage these days.  Whether it be hair, a dress or a wedding cake ombre is the new fun trend sweeping the world.  This meticulous process of color looks harder than it is, at least for frosting a cake.  I can't speak for hair stylists.

Color gradation occurs often throughout nature and it is no wonder why we love to recreate the phenomenon.  Think of sunsets in the desert or a perfectly ripe avocado cut down the center.  The change is so minuscule, so precise that our eyes can't even determine where the change of color happens.  I think it is wonderful, though sometimes daunting, to try and achieve this precision that nature has brought to our attention.

Even though this craft seems rather new many artists have been cultivating this talent of blending colors for centuries.  There are too many throughout history for me to mention, but currently I have one favorite artist who is a master at fading one color into another.  She is Kaori Fukuyama.  A painter who creates visual experiences with color.

"Aperture No.2"
Kaori Fukuyama, 2014

Not only does her work trick the eye with undecipherable graduation of color but also by creating optical illusions using this technique.  Check her work out here.
It. Is. Amazing.

Now if I could only do that with cake!

Tiers of Joy and Happiness

You must be asking, "are those flowers real?"  Yes, they are real handcrafted edible sugar flowers.  Each of the Peonies, Carnations and Green Button flowers were made petal by petal.  This wedding cake brought the opportunity to learn how to sculpt the Peony flower and invent the process for creating Green Buttons.

I must confess that this cake almost outlived all of its nine lives but persevered until the knot was tied.  After a few broken flowers, a frosting slip-and-slide, tropical flooding (I would've walked across the Rio Grande with this cake above my head to make it to the wedding finish line) and humidity that you could drink the cake was still standing.

If these four tiers are an omen of strength and perseverance then the newlyweds are truly blessed.  They say rain is a sign of good luck on your wedding day and by the amount of water that fell from the sky early Saturday morning this couple has many lifetimes of good fortune.

Congratulations to the happy couple!

xo

Gluten Free Ginger Cake with Raspberries

This past week I experimented with ginger and gluten free ingredients to make this gorgeous birthday cake.  When I think of autumn and winter flavors ginger often comes to mind and it was a fun chemistry project to incorporate this spice.  It is a dense cake so a light Italian buttercream pairs nicely as a filling and frosting.  

Gluten Free Ginger Cake

Celebrating a birthday during the holiday season can inspire wonderful combinations like red raspberries with white chocolate fondant.  Complete with a chocolate bow this wrapped confection is ready to sing to your tastebuds!

The following Gluten Free Ginger Cake is adapted from Antionette Savill's "The Gluten, Wheat and Dairy Free Cookbook".

Recipe

1/2  cup + 2 tablespoons butter (5 oz.)

         (can use vegetable shortening)

3/4  cup brown sugar, packed (5 oz.)

2  large eggs

3/4  cup rice flour (4 oz.)

3/4  cup potato flour  (4 oz.)

         (can substitute tapioca flour)

3/4  cup dark molasses

2  heaping teaspoons ground ginger

1  tablespoon chopped stem ginger (can be from jar)

1  tablespoon ginger wine (from ginger stock or jar)

1  teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum

Preheat oven to 350°.  Grease a 9" square pan or (2) 6" rounds and line the bottom with parchment.

Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and creamy.

Add the eggs, beating to just blend, then add the flours, molasses, ground ginger and chopped ginger.  Add the wine and mix thoroughly.

Pour into the prepared pan and bake for about 1 hour.

Leave the cake in the pan for about 20 minutes, then turn out, upside down, on a wire rack to cool completely.  When the cake is cold, peel off the parchment, wrap the cake in foil so that it is airtight and it will keep for a week.

Wait at least one day before icing the cakes.  After the cakes have been filled and stacked, roll out a thin sheet of fondant.  The dimensions of the rolled fondant should be the circumference of the cake by the height of the cake plus 1/2" to create a lip around the top edge of cake.  Once the fondant has been attached around the edge fill the top with raspberries.

Decorate the outside fondant as you choose!

more fun fondant shapes...

piped flowers...

hmmm...

Or not at all.  Just let the raspberries shine.