CHANEL QUILTED CAKE

The cake turned out beautifully ... 

but not without some serious issues along the way!

Here is how I made it, and also how I dealt with some of the problems.

Here we go...

The first thing I did was make the letters (JLH), the flower petals, and the black flower center out of gum paste two days ahead of time so they would have time to dry. You can also make the letters out of fondant at the last minute but I didn't want to handle the black fondant and then try to work closely with white fondant because of the staining the black would cause on my hands.

I always make extra letters (and extra flower petals) in case of last-minute breakage!!

After these dried THOROUGHLY (two days), I used an X-acto knife and CAREFULLY trimmed the fragile edges. You can also clean up the dust by painting them with a little vodka or clear alcohol. Water takes too long to dry, plus it will stain if it drips down the cake.

I made twice as many petals as I needed, in case of any issues: breakage, pulling away from wire, puckering, etc. I dusted all the petals with white pearl dust from Wilton before I assembled them.

The day before I was going to work on the actual cake, I covered the cake drum with fondant and let it dry overnight. I then attached the ribbon at the base. I used hot glue on the cake drum's ribbon since it was a grosgrain (ribbed) ribbon. If it's a satin ribbon, then you have to use double-sided tape and not hot glue or else the glue will show through the satin.

Note: You cannot cover the cake drums too far in advance or the fondant will dry out and start to crack.

I knew the customer wanted a plaque with letters in the middle of the cake, so I chose where the front of my cake would be then used my plaque "cookie cutter" to make a very gentle imprint on the cake. This way I could avoid putting pearls there, which would cause bumps underneath the plaque.

After my cakes were stacked and crumb-coated, I knew what their height would be; at that point I chose the size of the diamond cutter that would work best for both cakes. After the fondant was on, I started at the back of my cake, and at the base of the cake, and worked around, making sure my cutter was straight up and down. When I got around the entire cake and was near the back of the cake again, there was a little too much room in-between where the last diamond imprints would go, so I had to space out the last few.  I then went around the cake again, on top of the other diamonds. When I added the pearls, I added the largest pearls I could find to fill up the larger gaps in the back.

So now comes the first real problem. Once the cake was done, I started to get elephant skin. 

There are a lot of opinions as to why this happens. I find that it happens when I knead it too much after I've added the color. It could be a lot of things: using too much cornstarch, using water, older fondant, dried-out fondant, using too much dust, using vodka or other clear drinking alcohol on it, humidity or lack thereof, thus drying it out...and the list goes on.

Close up of the elephant skin:

Someone told me that if you get elephant skin, you can use a tiny bit of vegetable shortening and massage it and it will come back. While it did improve the wrinkles, it caused another problem, which was even worse...staining!! This did not dry and go away. It dried and stayed!

Close up of the staining:

I didn't address it that second. I added the second cake and hoped the staining would go away.

 It did not!

Next problem...after I placed the top tier on, it looked lopsided! I had to keep turning it this way and that, then I had to keep smoothing the top to get it to look "even." Usually this is not an issue...!

Then the pearls started popping out! Ping! Ping! Bouncing everywhere. I think I counted 11 that popped out. So I made royal icing (another half an hour by the time it was done and then I had to add the color!), and added the pearls, securing them with the now-blue royal icing. (Use a small, dry paintbrush to wipe away excess royal icing that squishes out when you push the pearl in.)

I added the ribbon around the bottom of both cakes, using icing and piping gel to attach to the cake.

After the fondant on both cakes had "set," I dusted the entire cake with white pearl dust, hoping that would help. It helped a little but you could still definitely see the staining! So I added a ribbon over the elephant skin/staining part. It was a little tricky because it was around the top of the cake and not at the bottom. I used a little icing and I also used a little piping gel. I had to reconfigure the ribbon about eight times because it would not lay properly due to the circular edge!

The ribbon at the top of the cake changed the design of the cake, and I wasn't happy about that, but there was no going back at this point. It was crunch time.

NOTE! When buying numbers or letters for the top of cakes, do not get plastic! At the last second, I dropped one of the numbers on the floor and it broke into two pieces!! (Due to strong language, it would not have been appropriate to have children in the area at that moment.) I had to think fast. I used a hot glue gun to gently reattach the number sections. Once it was dry, I VERY GENTLY turned the number over and, using a toothpick, I attached just a tiny bit of hot, melted glue to the back. After it was completely dry, I used a small brush and my black Wilton gel color and "painted" the glue. Whew! Close call. However, I took "back-up" in my "GO" bag...I took black gum paste, a small roller, some cornstarch, and number cutters, JUST IN CASE I needed to cut out a number "30" at the last minute, at the venue! I would have had to add them to the front of the cake, I guess! (paintbrush and vodka to attach)

Since I had to run a dowel down through the middle of the both cakes and secure it into the cake drum, I had to conceal the hole from showing at the top. So I ran the dowel down, OFF-CENTER, filled the hole at the top with a little buttercream to make it level, then made two diamond shapes and secured them to the top. (Note: the reason I doweled the cake off-center is because the hole would have shown in-between the top two diamonds if I had run the dowel in the exact middle. This way the diamond covered up the hole.) I added pearls to the edges of the diamonds. I waited until I reached the venue to place the numbers on top and insert the flower into the cake. If I had it to do over, I would have made those top two diamonds one size larger so I could space the "3" and "0" apart a little more.

The client wanted "sugar crystals" so I brushed piping gel on the cake drum and around the edge of the top cake and added sugar crystals.

Anyway, the final product turned out great, but not without some blood, sweat, and tears!! And the client loved it!

The next day I opened my email to this, which makes every bit of it worthwhile:

"Diane,

Thank you so much for making such a gorgeous cake! It was exactly what I envisioned and was beyond perfect!!!"

Followed up by a second email the next day: 

"It was one of the most beautiful cakes ever and beyond delicious! We've all been discussing how yummy it was, it's almost been completely finished off... And served as my breakfast today! Thank you again for being so amazing!"

To which I say: "I will never work a day in my life because I love every second of this!"