And now that I've become famous (hopefully not infamous) on the 4th floor of Old Main for my cake creations, I was asked by a coworker to donate a cake to the dessert dash for the Whatcom Museum Fundraiser in July. Of course I agreed, not only did it give me an opportunity to help out a good cause but it also might (fingers crossed) get my name out there. I'm not sure who is familiar with the concept of a "dessert dash" but the basic concept is the table that donates the most money gets to choose their dessert first and then so on and so forth.
With task in hand and no real limitations other than my own imagination (cheesy, I know), I set out to make a fanciful cake that encompased what I believed to be along the lines of the theme: "Downtown Aglow."
For the base of this masterful creation, I made a dark chocolate cake with a dark chocolate ganache and a Kahlua buttercream frosting. (Delicious, I know.) Now for the fun part, fondant butterflies.
I started out with yellow, red, and orange rolled fondant (you can easily purchase some from your local crafts store) and a butterfly cookie cutter.
Sprinkle some cornstarch on a cleaned work surface and roll fondant out to a 1/8 inch thickness. Using your cookie cutter, cut out as many butterflies as you need/want. Transfer cut outs to a sheet of wax paper.
In order to form the shape of the butterflies, take a piece of cardboard and bend it to a 70-80 degree angle and place the butterflies on the cardboard and allow to dry. This should take at least 24 hours.
Once the butterflies have dried, use royal icing to pipe the bodies and wing decorations. Allow those to dry for a few hours and then adorn your cake with beautiful butterflies.
Following the fundraisier, the coworker who asked me to donate the cake said that by the time her table got up to go collect their dessert, my cake had already been taken. Her table put in $300. My cake went for more than $300 dollars. Holy cow :)