I can never predict when design inspiration will strike, but when it does–in the children’s section at Target, searching the internet for office supplies, driving on the 405 Freeway–I feel compelled to recreate it in cake almost immediately. Next thing I know, I’m racing to my studio to execute the design. Sometimes, but not always, I actually like the result.
Ruffle cakes are usually covered completely in ruffles. Why not, I thought, be more subtle with my ruffles, using them only as an embellishment? The first cake was inspired by the ruffle bibs popular on shirts right now, like this one I saw on Ruffles and Stuff.
The next ruffle cake started off sort of mauve. Note: Shades of purple fondant change and fade rapidly and unpredictably. Whenever I make a cake with any shade of purple, I always do a test strip in advance. (Roll out a small piece of fondant and allow to dry. This will give you a more accurate idea of what your purple-tinted fondant will look.)
I’ve always loved those rocks with words etched on them, and attempted (rather unsuccessfully) to make them out of fondant. (I’ll have to give this another try at some point.) I wanted this ruffle to be vertical, like the ruffles on the pillow below, but it needed something else so I added a ruffled rosette.
I didn’t know it when I created this last cake, but after searching endlessly on the internet for the image that inspired it, I realized that the inspiration actually came from one of my favorite shirts of my daughter’s when she was just born. Although it was a deep green, it had three small horizontal ruffles on the front, just like the top tier in the cake below.
