A Hot Pink Butterfly Cake instead of TWD's Milk Chocolate Mini Bundt Cakes

You probably came here today expecting to find the Milk Chocolate Mini Bundt Cakes that were picked by Kristin of I'm Right about Everyhing for Tuesday with Dorie. Sorry, I didn't make them... As some of you know I accidentally lost about 17 pounds since Christmas and in an attempt to keep them off of me I'm limiting myself to one treat per week. Please go here to see how the mini bundt cakes turned out for the TWD-ers who made them. The recipe can be found over at Kristin's blog.

So now on to this weeks treat... It was something my mom and I had been looking forward to since the beginning of November 2009: we had planned to take a Christmas-themed cake decorating workshop at Sweet Things in Utrecht on the 23rd of December 2009. However unfortunately we had a huge snowstorm that day and the workshop was cancelled due to the weather. We were so dissappointed!!

Soon we rescheduled the workshop for the 1st of February 2010. When I woke up that morning I was so excited, but that excitement soon grew to worry when I got in the car and heared the weather report for that day: snow, snow and more snow.... I instantly thought my mom and I were jinxed: this could not be happening: the workshop could not be cancelled twice due to snow!! We hardly ever get snow here in The Netherlands: maybe two or three times per winter, now it seems that it has been snowing everyday since Christmas!!!I contacted Sweet Things as soon as I arrived at work and was very happy to hear that the workshop was still on!

I drove to Utrecht from work in Arnhem and picked up my mom from the trainstation. When we arrived we got to sample a cute cupcake and some coffee or tea as we waited for the other 4 people that would attend the workshop to arrive. Soon the workshop started: the cakelayers and buttercream had already been prepared in advance, so we got to pick a buttercreamflavor (strawberry, chocolate or caramel; both my mom and I picked caramel). We layered together two cakelayers and the buttercream of our choice, then the cake was put in the freezer.

Time to colour the marzipan: I wanted to have a bright, hot pink layer of marzipan to cover my cake with, so I got some gel and kneaded it through the marzipan.

Isn't it that a gorgeous pink colour???



Then we took our cakes out of the freezer and took some regular buttercream to crumbcoat the cake, here's my mom hard at work!



My cake after crumbcoating it. Then the cakes went back into the freezer and we got to pick colours and figures to put on our cakes.



I went with a butterfly-theme, and picked a lighter pink, a burgundy purple, black and white to cut the butterflies out of.

The next step was to roll out our marzipan, put it over the cake, make sure it covered all sides nicely without any air under it and cut the marzipan to size. The roling out part was fun: instead of using flour like I normally do when rolling out a dough, we had to use confectioner's sugar to keep the marzipan from sticking to the counter.

On to the decorating: to remove the white smudges of confectioner's sugar on both the cake and the decorations we used a slightly damp brush and brushed over the cake, then placed the decorations where we wanted them and brushed them with that same brush.
This purple cake is my mom's.

And here's mine: pretty pink, covered with butterflies!

All six of us made very different, but beautiful cakes!
My mom and I had a blast, time flew by and before we knew it it was time to wrap up our cakes and go home. I can't wait to go back to work Thursday and let my colleagues taste this cake!

Mom and I are already planning our second workshop with Sweet Things.
Up next? The Two-Tier workshop!!