I’ve been pretty lucky in my Wedding Cake Career that I’ve never come across any hard to please brides. Most are pretty laid back and they give me some great ideas and let me do my thing. Katie was definitely one of those brides. She came in for a consultation with her fiance Alan and when they left I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to create.
I knew there would be sugar orchids and lillies, and perhaps a rose or two. And there would be silver leaf. I then got in touch with Katie closer to the big day to confirm the details of the cake and she said she was quite happy to leave the design of the cake completely in my capable hands *gulp*…
So that gets my brain going and now I’m completely going off course of my original design. I sent Katie a photo of a geode cake and asked what her thoughts were. She LOVED the idea and I LOVED that she loved it. I’d been dying to do a Geode Cake since I first set eyes on the one by Rachael Teufel of Intricate Icings Cake Design. I purchased her tutorial on Craftsy as soon as she launched it. I purchased the rock candy crystals, and then I didn’t do anything with it…until now.
I thought the geode aspect would be the most difficult…until I realised how fiddly orchids are to make from sugar! I tried a few times until I found a method that worked for me. I had actually made 9 large orchids, ready to go when I realised I hated them. My husband, bless him, told me they were perfect and said that I really shouldn’t redo them. Sooooo when he left for work, against his advice, I redid them. There is a bit of a perfectionist in me believe it or not 😉 And I’m delighted I did, because I think if I had used the first batch of orchids, the result would have not been the same. They were far too big and would have looked misplaced on the cake.
Silver leaf is so much fun to work with too and I had to stop myself from putting it all over the cake. I decided that the addition of roses and lillies would change the overall mood of the cake and what I was going for . Orchids and Geodes just seem to work so well together.
Rachael’s instructions were so straighforward and easy to follow so creating the geode was great fun. I even made a baby geode with the left over modelling chocolate. If I were to do it again I would probably add less colour around the edges of the geode but all in all, I was more than happy with the end result.
The Geode Orchid Cake is gorgeous ! Agree that the size of orchids you used was just right. They draw you in to look at their detail, and into the mysterious geode treasure trove. Beautiful work!