Ombre Petal Cake

Just in time for Valentine's Day. A pink ombre flower petal cake:

I was inspired to make my own ombre petal cake when I saw THIS beautiful cake on Pinterest:

SOURCE

Gorgeous!

I finally got a chance to make this cake for my son's prom-like preschool "Sweetheart Dance", during which they held a baking contest.

I found THIS tutorial on how to make the ombre petal cake, and followed the directions:

SOURCE

I started with white fondant and used the "Electric Pink" food coloring, by Americolor.  The fondant portions measure out to about 1/3 cup each, which turned out to be MORE THAN PLENTY for doing all of the petals.  I had lots left over. 

If you decide that you would like to make this cake, please be sure that you set aside A LOT of time to make the petals.  They took hours upon hours. 

 
Another tip is to make them uniform in shape, as it was difficult to keep them lined up, because they were all sorts of lengths and sizes.  I would also advise making them wide, rather than long, so that you won't have to make quite so many petals.

Someone asked me how long it took me to make the petals.  She guessed four hours, and I laughed and laughed and laughed.  *SIGH*

 
My 5-year-old son is always happy to help, especially when I'm working with fondant.  It's like play-dough to him.  So, he got out the red and pink fondant, the roller, and the heart cutter, even the cornstarch, and made this little red and pink heart. It was his idea to put it into the center of the flower. Much better than my idea, which was to put a couple of edible pearls in there.  The heart was the perfect finishing touch for this "Sweetheart Dance" cake.

I wanted to cake to be tall, so I baked and stacked 3-layers.  I wanted to have enough room to add the band around the top and put the flower on the side, like in the tutorial, but I still ran out of room.  It did end up working out because the flower would probably have been too heavy to stay up on the side. 

Though it wasn't my finish vision, I am happy with how it turned out.  Lessons learned for the next one.  If there is a next one.  LOL!  This cake would also look cute in blue; sort of like fish scales, but with a little less frill.  Maybe next time...