Happy Birthday Ontip!

Baaah.  It's raining here in beautiful San Diego.  I must admit: I have a love/hate relationship with rain.  I love that the rain brings crisp, fresh air and washes away all that pollution.  I love that I can wear thick sweaters and still have to snuggle in it to keep warm.  I also love that the rain kind of brings about a sort of laziness...you know, where you  just want to stay indoors and under the blankets with a good book (or better yet, baking cookies in the kitchen!)  However, the rain also means I shouldn't be wearing flip flops anymore (I love flip flops)!  It also means I have to deal with unneccessary traffic (everyone knows San Diegans can't drive in the rain!).  And the worse offender of rain??  I can't snuggle in bed, under the blankets, with a good book...because I am stuck at the donut shop!  So, in an effort to bring some sunshine through this day, I thought I'd write a new post about the cake I recently made for my sister-in-law's bff, Ontip.  I was given free rein of the cake and had decided to make a vanilla chiffon cake with fresh strawberries as the filling.  I had made a similar cake for my mother-in-law's birthday last month, so this time around, I knew to put more strawberries in the middle!  I had wanted to do something simple yet elegant for Ontip's cake, and decided on fondant dogwood flowers.  I have the flower cutter and veiner from the Wilton line, but had also bought another set from Nicholas Lodge's International Sugar Art Collection while I was on my road trip.  My intent was to try out Nicolas Lodge's line and see how the dogwood flowers turn out.  The verdict?  They were fantastic!!  The details showed up much better and much more realistic.  I am very, very happy with my purchase!

The veining was just beautifully fragile.  It was of such great quality that it created breathtakingly fine details on my fondant!  It was most definitely worth the hefty price tag!!  I originally had the anatomically correct stamen centers for these flowers but then decided to use the silver dragees to fancy it up a bit (well, that, plus I needed an excuse to use the millions of silver dragees I had bought!).  I was even more convinced that the dragees were perfect for these dogwood flowers after Pepper (the little rascal in the chicken suit from this post) stole a few of my flowers that were drying on the table!  Overall, I thought the flowers turned out nice with the dragees...something somewhat different.

Sorry about the bad lighting!  I didn't want to put the flowers on earlier in the day, since the moisture from the whipped cream frosting would have wilted them!  So, I put them on last minute, and because we were running late, the sun had almost fully set before I was able to snap a picture.  Yep, very sad indeed, but at least I got one picture!  I piped some shells at the base of the cake and decided to leave the top more simple.  It was a pretty small cake, a six incher, so I thought adding a border on top would be overkill!  Especially since I've got the fondant flowers and the message on top already!  I had thoroughly enjoyed this project, as it gives me extra practice on cakes.  Can't wait for more to come! 

Happy Birthday Ontip!