The Cake for a King

I know, guys, I'm slacking.  But, before you judge, give me some grace. The last cake I made (The Princess Ariel Cake) was a whopper of a cake and it took me a few days to remove the sugar from my hair before I was ready to dive into the next cake.

A few days later, I decided to make the Chocolate Raspberry Genoisé and as you have not seen a post on it yet, that means there is a story--something along the lines of tripping before putting the pans in the oven. No tears, just anger and bitterness.  I'm re-making the cake this week so wait on that post for more details!

But after my cake drama with the raspberry genoisé (and after being exhausted from way too much summer school), I needed a break.  Off to the beach I went and now that I have returned, I am back in the game.

The next cake is not a Rose cake because it is a special request birthday cake.  It seems I'm slowly entering into the cake business.  The lady who commissioned it wanted to make her son feel like a king on his 18th birthday.  So what's more kingly than a king's crown?

Here's the process of getting there:

 

 

Next is the fondant:

For some reason, it wouldn't turn red. I used so much food coloring trying to get it to turn red but it was just not willing to compromise with me. I yielded and decided to just paint it later with food coloring.

 

All of the gold on the actual cake is also made out of fondant. I turned the fondant ivory and then used gold food coloring spray paint to turn it gold.  The "jewels" are upside down M&Ms. 

Once I got there I attached the longer strips of "gold" Those were made out of sugar paste or gum paste.  You have to make these a couple of days before so that they will harden and stand up.  I was impatient so my first batch didn't turn out too well. two of them broke.  That meant emergency hardening for batch two so I stuck them in a warming drawer on 100 degrees for about 12 hours.  It seemed to work well enough.  They still aren't as hard as I would like but they work. The cake will sit for another 24 hours before it is served so I think it will be just fine by then.

It was a really fun cake to make. I like it when people come up with cool new experiments for me to try.