Northern Lights Cake Northern Lights Cake
Art · Baking · Being Creative · Cake · Parenting · Photography · Projects

Northern Lights Cake

TJ Fox

I finished!

Northern Lights Cake
Northern Lights Cake

Seriously glad it is done, though. It was a blast and, for the most part, it came out really well. I was hoping to add more color, but with that base teal, it didn’t work out. I had several of the issues I kind of expected to have with some color bleeding and in not being able to use the pink or purple because it changed the color too drastically when I attempted to paint it on the base (looked more muddy than pretty).

Northern Lights Cake - Base Paint
Northern Lights Cake – Base Paint

I started by painting the whole thing a lighter version of the sky color I was going for. I realized really quickly that this ended up working in a similar way to my favorite drawing method, the eraser technique, where you put a base color down and either add more to go darker or remove color to go lighter (you can see a tiny bit of that on the left edge of the above photo).

Northern Lights Cake
Northern Lights Cake

I don’t love the tree silhouettes, but they aren’t total garbage. One of the issues I ran into is that my base fondant started to bubble on the bottom tier making my cake look like it isn’t level or that I jacked up the alignment on the top tier. It really isn’t. I didn’t notice until I was taking pictures, so it wasn’t something I could go back and fix.

Northern Lights Cake
Northern Lights Cake

 

Mostly, I’m thrilled with how this turned out. Even more so after BG finally got a look at it and saw what it was. She is kind of crazy over the northern lights like some teenage girls are over the latest boy band so when she saw this she went nuts. As far as she is concerned, I knocked this one out of the park.

Northern Lights Cake
Northern Lights Cake

Published by TJ Fox

I am a slightly sane artist, amateur photographer, book addict, wife, mom and raging introvert. I have more hobbies than I can count, so it is beyond shocking that I manage to find time to do any of them, let alone most of them and still have time to do anything else. Of all the talents I claim, writing wasn’t one of them until my muse dropped the idea for a book on my head.

24 thoughts on “Northern Lights Cake”

  2. Love it! The trees are amazing, and I had no idea what it was going to be from seeing yesterday’s post (which I just read because yesterday was insane.)
    I love seeing artistry in all forms. I should go back and look at pictures of some birthday cakes I created back when my children were young. Nothing this fantastic or ambitious, but they were made with love, just like yours and that’s what your daughter responded to.
    Happy birthday to her and Happy Birth Day to you.

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    1. Thank you! I only ever get to do maybe one a year anymore because BG is the only one that wants cake. I keep saying I’ll do one just for me at some point, but I never get around to it. I think I love doing cakes so much because it combines a lot of different creative/artistic abilities depending on the cake. I am by no means an expert and I’m nearly as likely to make a mess as I am to make something pretty, but I still love doing them.

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      2. That is assuming that the hot mess didn’t include a crappy cake. I had that happen once, on at least part of the cake anyway. The design failed utterly and the top layers of cake turned out to be one of the worst cakes I’ve ever baked. I’m still not certain what went wrong on the cake part, but the design will go down forever as looking like I made a butt out of cake. It was really awful. At least the bottom layer was tasty.

        Liked by 1 person

    1. I always freeze my cakes after I bake them, that way I can make them a few days ahead of time. It also really helps to keep it moist and it is easier to do the icing when it is just shy of being completely thawed out. Once a cake is decorated, it usually is good in the fridge for close to a week.

      BG just wanted simple, so they are boxed mixes. One layer is the confetti cake and the other is cherry chip. The icing is all mine and is a cherry butter cream (my normal butter cream w/ some cherry candy flavoring).

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      2. I have a couple recipes that I love, but for the most part, a boxed mix is great when you are looking at a basic flavor. I’ve had people be stunned when I told them what I made was a boxed mix. Honestly, the thing that makes or breaks most cakes is the icing and I almost never use store bought, unless it is my cream cheese cupcakes and only because that is such an amazing combo there is no reason to mess with it. I’m kinda of the mindset that I don’t need to try and reinvent the wheel when I have a perfectly good solution that is crazy easy.

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