My latest cake project is a birthday cake for a Luau themed party. I searched Pinterest, my favorite source of inspiration, for some cake ideas and shared what I found with the Mom ordering the cake. She knew she wanted something with pillars, but also that the cake didn't need to serve too many people. Our favorite design was featured on Cakes.com and they had awesome step-by-step directions to make this awesome tiki cake. You can check out their version and directions by clicking the above link.
As I have mentioned before... I don't like to copy other cakes, but I do get inspiration from seeing what others have done. My cake matches the size of the original design and I even used the same colors and some of the same methods. IMO Cakes.com did a great job of putting together their guide, but I wanted a little more flair...
I piped royal blue on the bottom half, sky blue on the top half and white on the top through an open coupler...Then I smoothed the icing out and added waves with a Wilton Icing Comb...this picture doesn't show the colors very well, but there is a nice hombre effect doing it this way.
I covered the next layer in white icing and then immediately covered it the floor and the counter...lol... with brown sugar crystals...(easy to make with regular sugar and a little icing gel) and some gold sugar that I bought. I added the totem poles and then I veered from the original design a bit...I saw these flowers at Michael's the other day and I fell in love with them...I added the flower spray to give it an awesome tropical touch and covered the columns in chocolate icing to make them match the cake... I did use the "Luau" sign from the "Coconut Cabana" accessory kit and since I didn't get the surfboard in the kit, I decided to make one out of fondant and it will be behind the white flower on the right side of the cake...
This is my version of the tiki hut cake topper. I cut the top cake a little small and the umbrella did not want to stand due to the short pick, so I decided to add flowers to both sides. Instead of using the flower picks I cut a few flowers from the bottom of the cake and I added a "Happy Birthday" pick I found...I am hoping to put the birthday girls name on the surfboard when I paint it...we'll have to see how that goes...that's why there's two sides right...lol...The directions recommend using the #789 Icing tip and 16" icing bag... about $9 for the bag and $4 for the tip and unless you plan to wash it between colors, you need two... I did use it on the blue, but still needed to smooth it with my angled spatula and for the brown I piped it on with the #12 tip I had to use next and then smoothed it with the angled spatula (much easier to clean than an icing bag and tip). I had the larger 233 grass tip for the straw on top of the hut and it turned out rather nice and I decided I wanted more of a plank look for the bottom of the tiki hut and used a 1/4" basketweave tip backwards to create the boards. I will put the cake topper on at the party and then cover the cake plate in chocolate icing and pipe the bottom border to finish it off...
This is the picture of the final cake! It was a hit with all of the kids and parents and may have earned me a couple of new jobs too!!!
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