Fascinator Cake – a Sophisticated Birthday Cake

fascinator cake

Today, one of my daughters, Sapphire, turns 11 and this is her birthday cake, colour choice was completely hers, blue and purple being her 2 favourite shades. As everyone thought the cake decoration resembled a fascinator, going as far as calling it a hat cake (really?), we christened it Fascinator Cake!

It’s a very simply decorated birthday cake, just some coloured fondant, coloured wires, feathers and beads. Of course, the cake is filled with buttercream icing and jam. Now as we’ve covered all the basics of cake decorating in previous posts and pages, I’m just going to talk you through this decoration with the links to all the relevant pages on the Cake Decorating Page.

If you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below or just send me an email.

Fascinator cake

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Fascinator Cake – a Sophisticated Birthday Cake

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• Yield: Serves 12 1x

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Description

Fascinator cake – as step by step tutorial n how to create this pretty cake, perfect for any birthday girl.

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Scale 1x2x3x

Ingredients

You will need

• 1 x 20cm (8″) Madeira Cake
• 1/2 portion Buttercream Icing
• 125ml (1/2 cp) jam of your choice (raspberry/apricot,etc)
• 500g (1.1 lb) light blue fondant icing (sugarpaste)
• some pink food colouring (optional)

Materials:

• some metallic wires, blue and purple here, 4 – 8mm
• blue and purple feathers
• some coloured beads (we used about 7-8)
• some purple or blue dragées (those little balls)
• tiny amount of edible glue
• purple ribbon, enough for a 20cm (8″) cake

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Instructions

Wires and beads

1. Take one wire, whichever colour, and string the beads through and twist the wire together to form a loop. Cut off the excess end, leaving about 3″ to pierce the cake.
2. Take 3 wires and form loops in increasing sizes, with the smallest being slightly bigger than the little beaded loop. See picture above to see what I mean. Again, trim ends as necessary.
3. Take 6 wires, 3 of each colour, and twist them around a pencil, to get that twisty look, leaving about 3″ free at the end to be inserted into the cake. See finished cake.
4. The other 6 wires will be inserted in at various heights, as they are. See finished cake.

Feathers

1. Number of feathers are up to you, we’ve used 4 blue and 3 purple here. Trim the bottom end of the feathers slightly but pushing the actual feathery bit into the cake is not a problem.
2. Fill the cake with the buttercream icing and jam.
3. Please read Icing and Filling Cakes with Buttercream .

Fondant Icing

1. Please read How to Cover a Cake with Fondant
2. You can leave the icing pale blue, as is, or knead some tiny bit of pink colour right at the end, to create streaks, which we’ve done here.
3. Cover the cake as following the step by step tutorial on the How to Cover a Cake with Fondant page.
4. fascinator cake

Decorating the Cake

1. We’ve placed the decorations off centre, to the front, making the cake have an obvious front and back. You can follow suit, or go for a centrepiece effect.
2. Place the ribbon around the base of the cake, securing with a touch of edible glue or even a bobby pin pushed into the cake. Just remember to take it out before serving!
3. Insert the beaded loop in first, followed by the other 3 loops in ascending order, see picture
4. Insert the feathers all around
5. Next come the straight wires. Place them all in the cake in a slight arc. Then using a pair of scissors, snip the tops off, giving them a graduated look.
6. The twisters come next, inserted at various points to complete the look, see tall picture below
7. Finally, glue a small number of the dragées around the cake just to “fill up” the empty look.

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