I got a call from a customer who knew precisely what she wanted. The occasion: her daughter’s thirteenth birthday; the design, a cake she saw in England, was strictly non-negotiable. No matter what alternatives or options I offered, she had made up her mind before getting in touch with me. I like working for determined people, and even if I’d rather have created something from scratch, I got along with my client’s requests for the design.

Since guest were all teen-agers, we chose a two-layer cake with no alcohol soaking. The lower is a chocolate cake layered and covered with orange-flavored chocolate ganache, lightly soaked with orange syrup. The upper is an orange sponge cake, lightly soaked with orange syrup, layered and covered with dark chocolate ganache. I covered both cakes with marzipan, then with Regalice fondant, the best available on the market at the moment, if you ask me.

The chosen design, with a quantity of tiny flowers in different shapes and colours, and sugar butterflies, was adorable, and preparing the cake was fun, although a little tricky. Shaping the butterflies was especially difficult: for the lack of a specific cutter, I had to shape each butterfly with a scalpel, and believe me, it’s easier said than done. Eventually I made it, and the result lived up to everybody’s expectations. All decorations are made of sugar flower paste (gumpaste), which is by far my favorite ingredient. Even though it requires organization and quick processing times (it dries quickly when exposed to air, and when dry it becomes almost unusable), it gives excellent results.

You can judge the results in the pictures, taken in far from optimum light conditions a few moments before delivering the cake. Just seeing Nadia’s expression (the nice, though exacting, lady I spoke about at the beginning of the post) gave me a great satisfaction for my work.