Funny story about this cake...
I've been wanting to make a cake inspired by this Oscar de la Renta dress for a while and last Friday, in the spirit of the soon coming spring, I set out to do just that. Since the dress is covered in yellow flowers, I wanted the cake to taste kind of earthy and not super sweet; I decided I wanted there to be flowers inside the cake too! There are dandelions of plenty in Texas at the moment so, they seemed to be the perfect flower to bake with. Especially upon my discovering that they are actually quite good for you. I made a basic yellow cake and added a hand full of dandelion petals (about a cup, plucked from the flower), and about 3 tablespoons of honey. I also used a not-too-sweet vanilla cream cheese frosting. I didn't have any yellow flowers to decorate with yet (dandelions weren't quite the right look) but I figured Amara and I would just go to the store and pick some up while the cake cooled.
I thought there would be plenty of yellow flowers to choose from but I only found two kinds at the store, daffodils and this plant called Sweet Broom, which I had never heard of. They were pretty and the right kind of yellow so I thought, "I can make this work." When we got home, I frosted the cake and then cut the flowers and arranged them on the counter to look like the pattern on the dress. Before I put the flowers on the cake, I thought it would be a good idea to Google them and make sure they weren't poisonous or anything. I'm sure glad I did that. It turns out, daffodils and Sweet Broom are both very poisonous! ¡Ay, caramba! I was planning on taking this cake to a birthday party of a new Mommy-friend of mine... can you imagine if I had poisoned everyone there?! Although no one probably would have eaten the flowers on top of the cake, the toxicity might have transferred to the icing or something. Not worth the risk!
Plan B: There was no Plan B. I just looked in my container full of cake decorations and scallops came to mind. Not the sea variety, although they are reminiscent of the Jean Paul Gaultier mermaid dress Marion Cotillard wore to the 2008 Oscars - I loved that dress. I cut one of my plastic biscuit cutters in half, dipped it in a plate full of edible glitter and then lightly pressed it into the cake in a scallop pattern. I went over them a couple of times and then I sprinkled on some silver stars. I really wish I knew how to photograph glitter! The pictures don't do the sparkles justice.
Funny little random, mismatched cake. It tasted good though, it was moist with a mild sweetness; we didn't really taste the dandelions but the cake slices sure looked pretty speckled with yellow and a little green.
Brad was traveling while I was baking so, when I told him that I almost brought a toxic cake to the party, he laughed and said that I was going about this making new friends thing all wrong.
Ay yai yai.