40th Birthday Geode Cake
I started this blog when I was 29. Two days ago I turned 40.
I don't even know how to process that information...
So instead of thinking about it, I decided to tackle a big cake project for my V-day B-day! I'd been wanting to attempt a geode cake for a long while, so this was the perfect excuse to decorate a larger 2-tiered cake.
The next question was what color theme would I go with? Geode cakes already have a tendency to look a bit... ummm... shall we say Georgia O'Keeffe-esque? So a pink-hued cake was out. My birthstone is amethyst, which would have looked beautiful as well, but I'm much more drawn to blues and teals as of late.
I realized after the fact that my cake had a striking similarity to the large painting I made for our dining room!
The cake may look complicated, but it was actually quite straightforward (and took wayyyy less time than the actual cake baking/assembly)!
The decorations are simply colored rock candy, edible gold paint around the edges of the geode (don't forget your 40% off coupon at Michaels-haha), and a cake topper I hand-cut from cardstock and painted (inspired by an Etsy topper).
You can find colored rock candy at specialty shops, but it's pricey and you can't customize the colors. So if you want to create your own colors, get some clear rock candy instead. I found a big bag of larger, more uniform pieces for super cheap at my local Asian market, so I just whacked them to get smaller and more interesting-shaped pieces.
I used this tutorial as a guide for how to color the candy. But instead of using luster dust I mixed paste food coloring with maybe 1/2 tsp or so of vodka and dribbled it over some rock candy in a plastic sandwich bag. Then I shook and mixed everything up to evenly color the candy. You can get lighter colors by either using a teeeeeny bit of food coloring in the vodka, or simply re-using the plastic bag with the remnants of the color that's still on the plastic.
They were so beautiful I couldn't believe how simple it was!
Once I had my candy it was time to figure out how to make my geode!
After stacking the cakes I chilled the cake for a bit to make the carving easier. I didn't fully know what I was doing, but I used some random photos from the internet for guidance.
Piping gel would have been better to get the rock candy to stick to the cake but I didn't feel like buying a bunch for this project. So I just used frosting and used smaller pieces of candy to fill in any gaps. A pair of tweezers is useful too if your geode is on the deeper side.
And the small pile of rocks in the left hand corner of the cake balanced the larger geode.
What's amazing is that the final touch of gold paint is what really took this cake from neat to WOW!
Normally this is where I would give you all the awesome details on the cakes and the recipes. This time though it'll just be links to the recipes with some notes.
For the cake flavors I wanted to try some new recipes. The top tier was a lemon pistachio cake with lemon curd filling. And the bottom was an almond cake with raspberry Swiss meringue buttercream. Both cake recipes were good, but not perfect, so I won't be blogging about them here (see ** below).
If you like fruit-forward frosting that isn't overly sweet you should definitely check out the frosting recipe I used. The secret trick: freeze-dried fruit! You grind it up and add it to your frosting (I used Swiss meringue, but any frosting will do). The best part is that you can use any freeze-dried fruit, such as strawberry, blueberry, cherry, banana, etc. The original recipe called for strawberries, but I used raspberries instead (make sure to sift out the seeds). It also gives the frosting a beautiful color without the need for any food coloring. My only other modification was to cut the recipe in half (since I only used it for the filling and crumb coat).
Yours in hoping her 40s are as fabulous as this cake!
Jacqueline
**The lemon cake had a great flavor, but it was a bit squat and dense--maybe from the ground pistachios and/or the lemon curd that was added to the batter? The technique was wildly different than what I'm used to, so hard to troubleshoot that. And the second cake may have been a bit denser/drier because I used almond meal instead of almond flour. Plus the directions to cream the sugar/butter was confusing, because the ratio of sugar:butter was much too high, so it never properly creamed. I forged ahead and all worked out in the end, but it was frustrating/worrisome during the process!
I don't even know how to process that information...
So instead of thinking about it, I decided to tackle a big cake project for my V-day B-day! I'd been wanting to attempt a geode cake for a long while, so this was the perfect excuse to decorate a larger 2-tiered cake.
The next question was what color theme would I go with? Geode cakes already have a tendency to look a bit... ummm... shall we say Georgia O'Keeffe-esque? So a pink-hued cake was out. My birthstone is amethyst, which would have looked beautiful as well, but I'm much more drawn to blues and teals as of late.
 |
| It's so hard to accurately photograph teal, but the color was much more vibrant in real life |
I realized after the fact that my cake had a striking similarity to the large painting I made for our dining room!
The cake may look complicated, but it was actually quite straightforward (and took wayyyy less time than the actual cake baking/assembly)!
The decorations are simply colored rock candy, edible gold paint around the edges of the geode (don't forget your 40% off coupon at Michaels-haha), and a cake topper I hand-cut from cardstock and painted (inspired by an Etsy topper).
You can find colored rock candy at specialty shops, but it's pricey and you can't customize the colors. So if you want to create your own colors, get some clear rock candy instead. I found a big bag of larger, more uniform pieces for super cheap at my local Asian market, so I just whacked them to get smaller and more interesting-shaped pieces.
They were so beautiful I couldn't believe how simple it was!
Once I had my candy it was time to figure out how to make my geode!
After stacking the cakes I chilled the cake for a bit to make the carving easier. I didn't fully know what I was doing, but I used some random photos from the internet for guidance.
Piping gel would have been better to get the rock candy to stick to the cake but I didn't feel like buying a bunch for this project. So I just used frosting and used smaller pieces of candy to fill in any gaps. A pair of tweezers is useful too if your geode is on the deeper side.
And the small pile of rocks in the left hand corner of the cake balanced the larger geode.
What's amazing is that the final touch of gold paint is what really took this cake from neat to WOW!
Normally this is where I would give you all the awesome details on the cakes and the recipes. This time though it'll just be links to the recipes with some notes.
For the cake flavors I wanted to try some new recipes. The top tier was a lemon pistachio cake with lemon curd filling. And the bottom was an almond cake with raspberry Swiss meringue buttercream. Both cake recipes were good, but not perfect, so I won't be blogging about them here (see ** below).
If you like fruit-forward frosting that isn't overly sweet you should definitely check out the frosting recipe I used. The secret trick: freeze-dried fruit! You grind it up and add it to your frosting (I used Swiss meringue, but any frosting will do). The best part is that you can use any freeze-dried fruit, such as strawberry, blueberry, cherry, banana, etc. The original recipe called for strawberries, but I used raspberries instead (make sure to sift out the seeds). It also gives the frosting a beautiful color without the need for any food coloring. My only other modification was to cut the recipe in half (since I only used it for the filling and crumb coat).
If you have any questions feel free to ask me about anything! And for those that made it this far down the post, I'll leave you with one last photograph of the pretty geode. :)
Yours in hoping her 40s are as fabulous as this cake!
Jacqueline
**The lemon cake had a great flavor, but it was a bit squat and dense--maybe from the ground pistachios and/or the lemon curd that was added to the batter? The technique was wildly different than what I'm used to, so hard to troubleshoot that. And the second cake may have been a bit denser/drier because I used almond meal instead of almond flour. Plus the directions to cream the sugar/butter was confusing, because the ratio of sugar:butter was much too high, so it never properly creamed. I forged ahead and all worked out in the end, but it was frustrating/worrisome during the process!
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