Watercolour Wedding Cake

I just love summer weddings, especially outdoor ones! I was married in the summer, but didn’t get an outdoor wedding so I thought for our anniversary which happened to be yesterday we would re-create our wedding day! It was so much fun! The kids got involved with the decorating, mom got busy with her flowers…it was a fun day!

I didn’t have a cake for our wedding….so I made one for us this time around! Our theme was peach, although my bouquet was red and white…don’t know how that happened…ahem mom! This time mom got purple which goes so much better than red;)

What I didn’t know was peach is a really hard colour to find now a days! Back in the 90′s peach was everywhere! I really didn’t know what I wanted for a cake topper, then decided on a floral topper.

I wanted something small and whimsical not exactly what I got…it was a bit high and big for the size of cake that I made, still pretty but not what I had imagined. The roses looked a bit browned…possibly bruised and the bottom part was a box of foam…didn’t know how to place it, didn’t want to make a hole in the cake, so I just put it on top for the pics. Oh well now I know for next time.

Next time I think I will just plan ahead more and let my creative mom make it! For sure by the time the kids are about to marry my mom and I will be pros at this stuff! We did manage to do a lot in the short time we had…I just cannot plan ahead…it always has to be last minute…hate that!

My mom and I got a variety of jars from the thrift store, we also found a lace table cloth. We filled the jars with tiny flowers like mini daisies and babies breath…can’t remember what the purple ones are called. We tied the jars with ribbon…had we more time we could have gotten some wild flowers, but they still looked so good!

Now lets get to the cake! At first I wanted to make a ruffle cake with fondant…but that takes too much effort and with everything else that had to be done, just didn’t have the time for that! I didn’t want a plain white or peach cake so I decided to make a watercolour cake! It was pretty easy to make, can’t really mess it up as its suppose to look like a watercolour painting! Using light colours helped of course.

I first iced the cake with my buttercream frosting, a crumb coating will do, with the left over icing I added more milk until it became a thin consistency, almost like canned frosting or even more thin.

I divided the icings in three bowls, one I made a darker peach, another a light peach and the third I kept white.

I had run out of orange food colouring, as I was at the store I noticed they had peach! I was so excited to use it, as I was tinting the icing it looked more like pink than peach. I took a small dab of red (no taste) colour using a toothpick and a really small dab of golden yellow and it turned into a beautiful peach, for the other bowl of icing I did the same using even less red and yellow.

I use Wilton gels for my icing.

Chill the cake with crumb coating for 45 minutes, you want the buttercream to be hard so that you can decorate.

Start with the darker colour on bottom, white for the middle area, then the top layer ice with the light shade of colour, with your icing spatula go around the cake while turning it, to make a ‘watercolour’ effect. Its really simple and I think looks great!

You can then decorate your cake as you wish.

For my buttercream I like to use butter with a bit of shortening especially if the cake will be outdoors, shortening hardens while butter melts.

I used 1 and 3/4 cups of butter and 1/4 cup of shortening with 9 cups of icing sugar, I had very little left over icing, considering I filled the layers with it as well.

The bottom layer was 3-9 inch cakes and the top was 2-6 inch cakes. I had an extra layer of cake that I turned into cake balls, I just put the cake in a mixing bowl, when I make vanilla cake balls I like to add jam, I use mystrawberry-freezer-jam ( I love vanilla cake with strawberry) I don’t really measure, I also added some spoons of buttercream frosting. Beat it all together till it becomes a soft texture. Shape into balls. For the peach colour, I used orange and white candy melts, melt them over a double broiler, I just use a stainless steel bowl over a hot pot of water on the stove top, constantly stirring till it melts.

Dip balls and add sprinkles right away as the candy melts harden quickly, you will need assistance for this part.

Hope I inspired you for your next party or celebration! If you have any questions please ask!