Cake inspire by... an amazing make up artist.

I was inspired by my friend Gabbie’s make up looks and I asked her which look she would choose to be turned to a cake. I love her subtle colour shading, and the purple colours being split by the yellow being used on her eyes. The stars being sharp and present were something I hoped I could re-create. 

I wasn’t sure if I was going to try and use food colouring as a water colour and paint the look onto fondant, or if I would use royal icing to pipe the look on and make it more block colours. In the end I thought I would try a palate knife with buttercream as the paint- or Impaso style my artist friend has informed me.

I split the cake and filled each layer with home made lemon curd. I then crumb coated a light purple buttercream on the outside. I did a second layer before beginning the decoration. 

I made a slightly darker shade of purple and put this into a piping bag with a star nozzle attached (Wilton 1M size to be specific). If I am honest, I have a vague idea of what I am going to do before I start doing it, but in this case, I had the bag in hand and at that point I wanted to do a buttercream rope. 

Using a turntable to make the “flow” easier, I started piping at 12 o’clock on a clock face moving clockwise round the cake. For the buttercream rope, I watched a LOT of YouTube tutorials to get the swirl right. I missed a few points when the buttercream ran out- or there was an air bubble (I am so impatient when filling bags… oops), but an easy strip made it blend in. 

My advice for buttercream rope design is to do about 3-4 inches round, pause with the buttercream closest to the cake, and readjust. Take your time. You get a cleaner look if you continue the ‘swirl’ of each rope ‘strand’ from the cake, rather than half way up and round the swirl. This may sound obvious. 

I then set to work on creating the ‘clouds’ and the stars. This I found tricky as I am not a painter, I also have never used buttercream in this medium before. If I was to do it again, I would soften the buttercream a bit more by adding some milk to make it smoother and blend easier. It was the perfect consistency for piping, but not as a make shift paint. 

In the end, I am happy with the result and I would love to make more cakes inspired by the world in a similar way.