Cake and Modeling Chocolate Accents!

Today is my good friend Rachael's birthday! I thought a celebration cake was in order! Something with fun colors! She lives in another state and therefore will not get to take part in the tasting of the cake! :(  I will have to devise a clever way to mail cakes in the future!... or just travel more! :) I will be taking suggestions on how to do both in the comments section below.

With every cake there has been a learning curve! There is always a problem to solve and I don't always solve it in the best way! I guess this is the sort of thing either years of experience or pastry school teaches you! - I have neither... only about a year of experience from about ten self taught cake or cupcake projects. On this cake the main thing that I am sad about is that I hand painted the band on the center tier. I painted this band yellow after it was applied to the cake! The yellow color is a slightly different color than the modeling chocolate. People probably will not notice unless I point it out, but I know it's a different yellow! I should have colored the fondant before I put it in the border mold! I tried using the border mold with the modeling chocolate. The modeling chocolate worked great in the mold however the band set up very quickly and it crumbled when I tried to bend it around the cake!

That being said I saw a Craftsy class where the instructor used modeling chocolate to decorate her cake! She made it look so easy that I went a little overboard buying the candy melts from wilton! I am still baffled by modeling chocolate! It is either too crumbly or too soft...almost never just right for sculpting but it works great with gum paste cutters! That being said I went the gum paste cutter route with round modeling chocolate, struggled through the flower and here is my final project!  The cake however baked up perfectly and the buttercream under the fondant is delicious!