A Fairy Cake for a Sweet Birthday Girl

Fairies are a favorite of a dear friend so she requested that theme for her daughter's first birthday. The human shape is a challenging thing to make in edible form, and I cautioned her on expectations of realism. She showed me a book with these worm-like fairies and I was game.

We discussed a pink lily as the backdrop(based on this toy) and the design was born.

To make the flower, I used a leaf cutter on pink colored gumpaste. I dried the cut pieces on curved surfaces (a paper towel cardboard tube lined with waxed paper works great) for over a week to be sure they were stiff. The day before I made a pink gumpaste circle about 2 cm thick which I stuck the tips of the petals into before it dried.

Of course I wanted this cake to taste amazing, so against my better judgement I decided to use a whipped cream/cream cheese icing. It was challenging to smooth nicely, and almost insane to pipe! The purple border at the top was intended to be star-tipped beauty but as you can see I could barely get it to look decent. I learned my lesson and made the lower purple border with a larger star tip. Luckily the green lily pad should look natural, and therefore imperfect.

Three layers of cake and two of the strawberry cream filling from Cooks Illustrated created a show-stopper.

The vine along the outside of the cake used a tip #3 and a small star tip for the pink flowers on the vine. I feel lucky to be a part of this sweet girl's life.