The Anniversary Rose Cake

The finished cake at the party.

So this morning I woke up and I was presented with some choices. It's Sunday. I could:

A) Clean, do some laundry, and prepare for the upcoming week in general
B) Be the studious graduate student that I am and work on my first of several Capstone presentations that is due tomorrow
C) None of the above

Naturally, choice C prevailed, and my eyes are now flicking back and forth between my computer screen and Chopped on the Food Network (do you watch that? If not, you should).

**Updated information: What follows in the next two paragraphs might not make sense, since my blog has undergone renovations since this post went live...to fill you in, the background of my blog title banner used to be a rectangular close-up photo of the frosting on this cake. It was awesome.**

As I browsed through my repertoire of time-wasters on the internet, it was brought to my attention (by myself), that someone might look at the banner of this blog and think, what exactly is that?

Well, that, my friends, is in fact a close-up of the frosting on my very first "Rose Cake". I don't know who invented this particular frosting rose technique, and for all I know, real chefs have probably been using it for eons. I, however, was a frosting rose virgin until I decided to try it for my parents' 30th anniversary party.

(Before you get your blood pressure up, I do know that these are the cheaters' version of frosting roses, but I think they are quite pretty...even prettier than the more realistic ones if you ask me...and it's my blog, so you don't even have to ask...but I digress...)


Some time in 2011, Chelsea, of the tollisnest **her blog is now called Fluff That Nest** (I don't think I will be mentioning her in every single post, but so far so good!), introduced me to Pinterest. Holy buckets, y'all! If you need another way to spend hours and hours of your time on the web, get on over there! I am completely obsessed. Anyhow, over on Pinterest, I stumbled across this stunning cake by i am baker. I repinned it immediately, and vowed to one day learn how to do that.

An occasion quickly presented itself. My parents, my beautiful, wonderful parents, celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary in November 2011. I decided to throw them a little soiree, and what better occasion for a pretty, white, rose-covered cake!? I checked out the rose cake tutorial (which can be found here), and thought..."I think I could do that!"Amanda at i am baker assures the reader that it is a very simple technique and guess what? She was right! As it turns out, it was super simple and so pretty!

I made a carrot cake (from a secret family recipe, so sorry, no recipe will be posted here for that), since my parents had carrot cake at their wedding and it's a family favorite. Any flavor cake would be fine. I think it goes without saying that if you have carrot cake, you have to have cream cheese frosting. The rose technique works better with a good crusting buttercream, but I was locked into the cream cheese. I think it turned out alright nonetheless, don't you?

The gist of the roses is this:

• You must crumb-coat/dirty ice the cake before you do the roses, otherwise you will get little dark patches and see the cake through the gaps in the flowers.
• For each rose, using a 1M tip, start in the center of where you want the flower to be and slowly twirl around two or three times (depending on how wide the flower needs to be), keeping the spiral tight to look like a rose. 
• Do the sides of the cake first. Depending on how tall you make it, you may want a single row of roses on the sides, or you may want two. I did one. If you do this, you just want to make each rose as wide as the height of the cake.
• When you do the top of the cake, do the center rose first. Then do a ring of roses around that one, and then another around those ones, etc. until you reach the edges.
• When you are done, you will have small spaces in between roses (you know, with them being circular and all...). You can fill in these spaces by going back and making a little swoop of icing in the same direction as the adjacent rose.
• Viola! You have yourself a rose cake!

I think my next rose cake adventure will be like this one...

**Last annoying little update...I did have a next rose cake adventure (a few actually), and I am pleased to say that my "Girly Cake for a Baby Girl" project exceeds the expectations I had for myself when this post originally went live. Frosting roses are easy and fun y'all!!**

Enjoy! 

The cake poses in front of a wedding portrait of my parents...

My parents cut their cake. Yep, we made them do it like at a wedding, with everyone watching.

Stay tuned for a post on the chocolate cupcakes that also made an appearance at this party...