Ombre Wedding Cake Tutorial

I had the exhilarating task of making my SECOND wedding cake this year for my dear friends, Darcy and Elyse. The Bride sent me some inspirational photos of soft iced cakes and a colouring concept that I wasn't familiar with - ombre. While the faded colour of this cake may look challenging to achieve, it was actually really easy to pull off. Just make sure you do some bicep exercises leading up to the task because all that icing killed my arm!

Soft Iced Ombre Buttercream Wedding Cake - How to.

What you'll need.
2 x batches of butter cream icing (divided into 5 batches)
Bowls
Large flat blade cake spatular
Gel colouring in your chosen colour

Start by filling and stacking your cakes, then cover in a thin crumb coat. Use uncoloured butter cream for this. Pop in the fridge to set.

While your cakes are in the fridge, start colouring your icing. I used four colours for my cake, fading from an off-white on the top down to a bright pink on the bottom. The best way to achieve the faded colour range is to work from the top/lightest colour down. You can always make you're icing darker, but it's harder to fix/lighten the icing once coloured. Don't start colouring the next batch of icing until you've managed to get the colour before it right. Try not to make the shades of icing too far apart, as they will blend and mix into each other once you put them on the cake. Also, don't forget that you will need more icing for the darker/base colours as there is more surface area to cover!

I'm trying to achieve a soft and textured look, so I don't have to worry about evenly icing the cake. Start by applying a thick layer of icing in your darkest colour to the bottom half of your base cake, I used a small butter knife to do this. Repeat with the second colour. 

Once the cake is covered in both colours, start to even out the icing with your large flat blade spatular. You will notice that once you start to smooth and even out the icing, the two colours will blend together slightly which makes the colours look as though they're fading into each other.

To achieve the rustic, soft iced look, I take my large flat blade spatular and hold it at a slight angle so the tip of it cuts into my icing as I spin my cake turntable.

I'm really happy with how this cake turned out - and so were the Bride and Groom, which is the most important part! It can be a little bit fiddly, but the overall look is so romantic and rustic. Well worth the effort!

And because it was by far the most beautiful wedding I've ever had the pleasure of attending, there is a lil' video I put together (all shot on my iPhone, hence the crappy quality!) But you get the idea - this video DOES NOT do the wedding justice, it was absolutely stunning!

Congratulations, Darcy and Elyse!! xxx



Darcy & Elyse's Wedding from Kimberley Burrell on Vimeo.

My first wedding cake. Congratulations Nads and Robdog!

I love weddings. The dancing, the food, the copious amounts of alcohol. Oh, and not to mention all the love. So much love! Last weekend my SIL married her prince charming. The weather was perfect, the dress was perfect, the location was perfect, the food was perfect and the wedding cake.. well, it turned out alright! :)

You may remember when I had the pleasure of making Nads and Robdog a French inspired engagement cake. A memorable experience, to say the least. The wedding cake, thankfully, was less eventful. But that’s not to say there wasn't a few bumps along the way. Namely an exploding bowl of ganache. Yeah, that was heaps fun to clean up. My bad. 

We start our wedding cake adventure two weeks out from the wedding day. The bride requested all mudcake, and luckily I had recently perfected my super moist mudcake recipe!  I spent all day Sunday, and Monday and Tuesday night baking five separate cakes. The plan was to use the mudcake as the bonbonniere for all the guests, so there would have to be extra slab cakes made, because there was no way in hell I was making a five tier cake that was likely to sink and collapse into itself, knowing my luck! With that decided, three 14inch slab cakes were made. These would be delivered to the venue early so they could be pre cut and packaged, ready for guests to take home.

Now, that’s the guests taken care of. Next up, the bride and groom. A 10inch and an 8inch mudcake formed the display or ‘cutter’ cake. Cover it with white fondant and Bob’s your uncle!! You have a wedding cake! Almost.

Nads and Robdog had a black and purple theme throughout their wedding, and the invitations featured black lace and purple ribbon trim. Very pretty. Also very pretty on a wedding cake, FYI. 

I’d discussed ribbons and decorations with the bride and groom, and they were happy to leave the creative side of things up to me. So once the invitation arrived, I knew exactly how the cake would look. The display cake was dropped off at the venue in the morning with the slab cakes, and I was able to come back and set up it in between the ceremony and the reception. I had looked at a few bride and groom toppers, but I’ve found this to be such an old fashioned tradition. There really wasn’t anything nice available, everything was tacky and plastic unless you were willing to spend between $200 and $400 to get personalised toppers made. Instead, I stumbled across some sugar diamonds, which matched the diamontes featured on the wedding invitation perfectly.

The bride and her swag of bridesmaids spent, what I can only imagine to be an alcohol fueled weekend making gorgeous cake boxes which doubled as name tags for all the guests, which featured this little poem

It would be a big mistake

If you forget your cake

Please enjoy the flavour sensation

Thanks for sharing our special occasion

Nobody forgot their cake. And extra slices of cake from the display cake were put out for guests to have with coffee. The bonbonniere cake boxes were a perfect idea. When catching up with family and friends the next morning, everyone exclaimed ‘Oh KayB! I just had your cake for breakfast! Amazing’. Haha, oh to live in a world where everyone eats cake for breakfast. Living the dream guys, living the dream.

So, here are all the statistics. Along with a heart attack, this cake (all five of them) includes;

1.2kg milk chocolate

2.4kg dark chocolate

2.3kg butter

3kg flour

5kg castor sugar

36 eggs

1.2 L cream

1.2 L buttermilk

Things destroyed during the making of this cake include;

1 extra large glass bowl

1 batch of dark chocolate ganache

1 index finger

18 tea towels

The amount of people who enjoyed a KayB’s cake;

Approximately 108. And a very happy bride and groom. Which are the only people who matter!

Congratulations Nadia and Rob. I’m so happy I could help out with your wedding. Looking forward to making you both lots more cakes for lots more special occasions in your future!