4th of July Cake

Happy 4th of July!! What an awesome country we live in!! I’m soo thankful for our country (despite the yuckiness that goes on) for we are truly blessed to be free!! I am so thankful for the men and women who have fought for the freedom I enjoy!!

A friend of mine asked if I’d help her out with a cake for a very special fourth of July party she throws every year. Last year I did this cake for her (click here) and so this year, we wanted it to still be a fourth of July cake, but something more funky and fun for this party. The invitations had fireworks on them, so we wanted to incorporate them in some way. I decided to make them a little abstract…almost like a flower, but yet still “firework-ish”. After 8-10 designs (I just couldn’t decide), we finally agreed on this one just days ago!
The final cake looks pretty close to the design – whew!! I was happy about that! Although, as you can see, there was one change. I eliminated the fireworks coming out of the top of the cake. Once the cake was put together and I stood back and thought it just looked a little cheeeeesy. I think because of the silver wire. There wasn’t any other silver anywhere on the cake. So, I left it more simple…and I’m happy with it!

Here’s the back. The cake will be in the center of their serving table, so it has to be viewed from all sides. So, I did a circular design that just waves all the way around with little fireworks and dots all around. The fireworks were something new for me. I ended up making over 50 because I kept breaking them and it took me a while to realize what worked and what didn’t! They are made from the Wilton chocolate melts. I always want everything to taste sooo yummy and I can’t stand the taste of royal icing, so I knew I wanted to try and make these out of chocolate. The problem was the temperature and that they are so fragile. What ended up working was to pipe them on wax paper that I covered in crisco. I then stuck them in the fridge for about an hour to firm up nice and hard. I then used along exacto knife to slide under the whole thing and pick it up. Worked beautifully with the crisco and right from the fridge. It was funny because after sitting out for only 15 min or so, they began breaking when I picked them up…so, back in the fridge they went!All in all it was a fun cake! It was actually my biggest cake to date! The 10″ tier was 6″ tall and took me two tries to cover it in fondant! It was crumb coated in chocolate ganache, so I had to scrape off the chocolate, re-work the fondant and go again!! Whew! I’m just glad for decorations on that tier! All the red decorations (besides the fireworks) are modeling chocolate. The modeling chocolate makes it a dream to cut and place on the cake! I heart modeling chocolate!

The 6″ tier was 5 layers of vanilla butter cake, sliced strawberries and vanilla bean Swiss-meringue buttercream. The 8″ tier was the same as the 6″. The big 10″ tier was 4 layers of a dark chocolate cake with mocha Swiss-meringue buttercream and crumb coated in dark chocolate ganache. It’s yuuuummmmy! But soft, so hopefully it’ll stay upright at the party!

I hope you all have a wonderful fourth of July!!! Happy Independence day!!