Gymnastic Petal Ombre Cake

WoW! Just like that June is gone....time is flying and I can't keep up!! This month has been oh so busy. It seems like lately all I've doing is baking up a storm. I love it!! Partly because I have been selling my goodies at the Farmers market every Friday and partly because I've been making some very special birthday cakes and cookies.

I just had to share this one with you all because.... 1. It's adorable! 2. I'm totally in love with the "ombre technique" and 3. I love the "petal frosting technique too". Three very good reasons to love this cake I think, oh and it doesn't hurt that it was Triple Vanilla Cake.

Super moist delicious vanilla cake, vanilla pastry cream filling and soft and fluffy vanilla buttercream, to all the chocolate lover's out there....in your face!!! I do like chocolate but I'm not a chocoholic by any means and it seems like most people are, so when someone orders vanilla anything it's right up my alley:) I use the vanilla cake recipe from Joy of Baking, it is so buttery, fluffy and moist perfect for cakes and cupcakes. If you looking for a great vanilla cake recipe try this one you won't be disappointed, you can find the recipe here.

The theme for this cake was gymnastics. I made two very cute girls doing gymnastic poses from fondant, some very cute rolled ribbon roses. For a tutorial on rolled ribbon roses click here. Then I frosted the cake using the petal ombre tecnhinque.

Ombre means shaded or graduated tone. Easiest way to do this with icing is to first decided how many shades you want to use, get separate bowls, and piping bags ready for each shade. Then starting with the darkest work your way up. I first separate the white creamy buttercream evenly into 3 bowls. Then I tinted the icing, I use gel colours so for the deepest blue I used 4 drop of food colouring gel, 2 drops for the next lighter shade and finished with white. Want more layers then just slowly graduate the colour make darkest 4 drop, next 3 drop then 2 drops and so on. Don't be a afraid to experiment and have fun!!

The petal technique is quite easy. Once you tinted all the icing and filled the piping bags with each colour. Start piping big dime to quarter size dots starting with lightest colour to darkest. Work vertically one row at a time. Once you've pipe the row, with a clean teaspoon press the back of the spoon gently in the center of the dot and pull and drag icing out. Continue working all the way down the row. Pipe the next row the same as first leaving a bit of a space between. Press and drag same as first row. Here's a link for a great petal cake tutorial.

But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. Before the ombre and petal effect I cut out these super cute gymnastic girls out of fondant and added some 3-D effects with the hair, and clothing.

So cute!!

Add caption

Rolled Fondant Roses......for tutorial click here.

And the final result is a super cute Gymnastic Petal Ombre Cake. I think this is one of my most favorite cakes. I really love the petal and ombre techniques I definitely will be revisiting them both again and again.