It's time for Tea!

After my nieces birthday party one of my sisters friends asked me if I would be interested in making a cake for her daughter, she even said she would pay me. I was right on board for that because up until now I had never been paid to make a cake for anyone.

The little girl was having a pink and purple tea party themed birthday. I was originally thinking I would do a cake cut into the shape of a teapot. Like if you were looking from the top it would look like a teapot. Then I decided that just wasn't good enough. I was going to make a tea pot with cups and milk and sugar. The whole shebang.

This may come as a shock if you've been reading my other posts, but this cake is NOT chocolate. Since the little girl liked pink so much I decided to use the strawberry cake recipe I had used for my nieces birthday. So, I made the cake and then let it chill. Then i carved the cake to make it rounded like a teapot. In retrospect I wish I had made it more round cause this reminds me more of a kettle than a girly teapot. 

So once I had the shape I iced it in vanilla and set it aside. For the details, I used rice crispy treats and formed them into a spout, a handle and some cups. In the end I only ended up using one cup on the tray.

After the rice crispy treats had set I iced them and then left them to harden some more. Going back to the cake I covered it in a layer of purple fondant. the spout and handle were covered in pink fondant. On top of the cake I added a pink circle of fondant on it with a pink ball of fondant secured with a tooth pick on top of that. This was to create the look of the lid. Then I secured the spout and handle onto the cake using tooth picks.

Next it was time to prepare the board. I used a rectangular cake board to act as the tea tray. Then I cut out a large white circle to act as a doily for under the tea pot. With the circle in place on the board I Traced a smaller circle inside and then traced a lattice pattern inside the second circle. Next I put the teapot on top of the fondant doily and arranged the cup beside it.

Then I added some last minute decorations to pull it all together. I added a bow around the ball of the handle and a simple border of rolled purple fondant along the bottom of the pot. Then it was time to pipe.

This was my first time doing a lot of decorative piping on a cake. I must say, I did a decent job of it. On the pink I chose to do a swirly design in white. I love doing swirls. Then the purple got a white and pink floral design. To finish it all off I used pink icing to decorate the design I had traced into the white doily. 

When the parents came to pick up the cake they loved it. They called it a cake boss cake, which was the biggest compliment I could have gotten. I know my cakes are nowhere near that, but it was still nice to see the parents so happy with it.