This cake was designed for a small wedding. The bride brought us a picture of a Chinese dish for us to hand paint the koi fish from. This was one of the most difficult projects we've had in a long time. Hand painting on cakes is one thing....copying an already complex piece of artwork is quite another! We were given the colours red, orange and gold to work with.
First I cut two fish shapes from white chocolate to overlay the fish shape onto the cake, to give some texture and a less flat finish. I polished the white chocolate to give it a high sheen before painting with edible food colours in the same way as the dish was painted. I then painted gold details on the fish to bring out their scale pattern and to give a rich gold tone.
A sugar lotus blossom was dusted with the palest pink and added to the top of the cake.
Pink velvet cake with raspberry buttercream for the cake and red velvet cake with vanilla buttercream for the matching cupcakes. In Chinese culture red and gold symbolize good luck. We added white chocolate lotus blossoms dusted with a little pink edible colour.
