In a previous post, I already showed you a sneak peek of the cake I made my mom for easter. It wasn’t the usual chicklets and eggs or baskets, which you so often see at Easter. Not because I don’t like those, or that I think I can’t make those. (Though I haven’t tried basketweaves yet, so really, maybe I can’t make those.)

To me Easter spells spring. New life has begon to emerge everywhere, from little ducklings, to lambs (traditional Easter food, right?!) to flowers that come up in abundance. Even though Easter fell very late this year, it didn’t change that feeling to me.

My Easter cake needed to have spring colors, close to pastels, but possibly just a slight bit more vibrant (what do you call that?) Pink and green and yellow would do fine. I also knew I was bringing the cake to my mom, and she’d expressed her love of fondant flowers before, so I needed to incorporate that as well.

I had tons of ideas on what to incorporate, but in the end simplicity won. Doesn’t it always? Not multiple ribbons or stings of decoration, no basketweaving with fondant on top of that, not eggs and flowers and chicklets and more ribbons, but a small bunch of flowers, calla lilies to be precice, held together with a bow.

In all honesty, I have to admit that the day I made this cake, the outside temperature had suddenly sprung up. It felt like summer. My kitchen being about 86 degrees made working with fondant a little difficult. Lesson learned, next time I need to decorate a cake and it’s not winter, I’ll do it another time of day. Regardless of the difficulties and the reason behind my decorations, I do love the way it turned out.

The recipe for the cake itself was the same sponge recipe I used for the birthday cake. I baked it in a smaller sized cake pan this time, and therefore ended up with a higher cake, I liked that!

Even though the custard buttercream I used last time tasted really good, I decided against it this time. It was hard to get it to a nice spreadable consistency and melted/softened quickly. That’s something I couldn’t have on such a warm day. These things made me opt for an icing that was a little more stable. A cooked Italian meringue buttercream. The consistency was perfect, and since it crusted up a little, it didn’t melt so quickly. The taste? Fluffy, buttery and meringuey. I liked it!

So there I went, I torted the cake, filled it and iced it in buttercream the afternoon before. I placed it in the fridge to stiffen up and crust over a bit. (It’s not a very thick, strong or heavy crust, mind you, just a little less sticky than American or custard buttercreams are.) I proceeded to shape my calla lilies and my bow, saving some of the pink to make ribbons from that bow. The next afternoon I rolled out my fondant to cover the cake, placed my decorations, piped a royal icing border, just because I think that finishes a cake off, and brought it to my mom in time for Easter dinner.

The Italian Meringue buttercream recipe is courtesy of Cake Love DC (and a tutorial on how to make it, is found on youtube)

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