"Of course!" I said, "When do you need it by?"
"Tomorrow," she replied.
Uh oh!
Rachael decided she wanted a palm tree with flip flops on her birthday cake to go along with her pool/slumber party theme. And we had one night to do this. Oh, boy!
So Christina came over, we hit some of the local stores for some last minute supplies, and got to baking. Rachael loves butter cake, so we started with a two-tier round cake as a base. Chris found this cute lei to act as a base border (saving us some time!) and we placed that around the bottom tier. The bottom was iced in white and blue vanilla buttercream to look like water while the top tier was covered in brown sugar "sand". Next came the requested design...
We started with the flip flops, which were made out of fondant. We came up with a purple, pink, and teal color combo for a super summery feel. The flip flop base was in purple with teal straps. We then added pink flowers on the toes of the flips and accented them with sugar pearl centers. I almost wished they were real!
Next we did the palm tree. A word of caution to any of you trying your luck with cake decorating... fondant ONLY seems to stick to icing or other pieces of fondant that have been painted with water. I discovered this the hard way when I woke up the next morning and the palm tree had sagged. Whoopsy! After a quick fix, we were back in business. But, if I had known this valuable little piece of information, it would've saved me alot of time and stress. Ya live and learn.
The palm tree was essentially a plastic pipe that we layered with fondant to give the bark a real feel. We did the palm leaves out of gumpaste since that dries a little harder and holds up better to structuring. We veined and threaded the palm leaves on floral wire and stuck those into the top of the tree.
And here's the finished product...
Not too bad for 4 1/2 hours of work if I do say so myself! Happy Birthday, Rachael!!! Hope your party turned out great!!
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