Today's featured wedding cake is a wonderfully romantic design by Coco Paloma Desserts in Austin, Texas. I interviewed owner and pastry artist Paloma Efron to get the scoop on how she created this cake.
What was the inspiration for this wedding cake?
The bride came in with an inspiration photo of a ruffled cake, but she also loved a cake we had done that was decorated with sugar flowers. So we decided to combine the two ideas.
How did you make the ruffles?
They are made from a 50/50 mixture of fondant and gumpaste. First, we take the mixture and roll it out into strips, which we individually shape and frill by hand. The ruffles are left to dry for about 15 minutes—that way they won't wilt. Then the ruffles are individually applied by hand in even rows around each tier. The whole process took about nine hours!
Can you explain how you made the sugar flowers?
The sugar flowers are made from gumpaste. We decorated the cake with a combination of garden roses, peonies and peony buds, hydrangeas, and accent buds. To make the peonies, I individually shape the petals using gumpaste and affix them to floral wire. Then, I dust the petals with edible paint—I mixed several colors to get the right shades of pink and blush. Then we assembled the sugar flowers using floral tape. A large peony has about 25 sugar petals.
For the sugar roses, we don't use wire. We start with three gumpaste petals to create the center of the rose, then we let them dry for about 10 minutes. Next, we affix additional petals, using egg whites, to create the rose. It takes about 20 minutes to create a single sugar rose.
The hydrangea flowers are individually formed and set to dry. Once dry, I dust them with paint and apply the tiny center. Then we flip them over and use a bit of pale-green gumpaste to affix the wire to the flower. For a cake this size, we made about 80 sugar hydrangeas.
What are the cake flavors inside?
This cake is very romantic on the outside, but inside, there's a surprise! The bride wanted a "funfetti" cake, so we took our white-cake recipe and added rainbow confetti sprinkles to the batter. It's definitely unexpected! The cake also features two tiers of chocolate cake with Swiss-vanilla buttercream filling.
—Heather Lee
