Our contributors, Mary and Brenda Maher of Cakegirls, are back with a new tutorial!
When you’ve been making cakes for a long time, you work hard to hone your skills and really discover your aesthetic as a cake maker. Sometimes you feel like you’ve “found your voice” and other times you feel like you’re in a bit of a rut. That’s why it’s so exciting to see new and inspiring cake trends appear, opening your eyes to how others approach design and their refreshing take on treats you might never have thought of.
So, when faceted gem cakes hit the internet, it was a such a delight. We first spotted them in this bakery tour back in 2014. They’re individual sized, full of whimsy, brimming with cake and covered in sparkle. We HAD to give them a try. Inspired by this trend, we simplified them by using good ol’ candy coating, an inexpensive chocolate mold and a touch of sugar crystals to up the glam factor. They can be completely customized by picking your own colors and flavorings.
We kept the colors on trend and the filling straight forward and boy, were they fun to make. Whip up these faceted beauties and you’ll blow away your friends with your great taste…I know we did.
CAKE GEMS
a tutorial by Cakegirls
Supplies:
Bright Aqua Blue Cake Pop Filling
3-D Diamond Chocolate Mold
White Candy Coating
Light Pink Candy Coating
Bright Blue Candy Coating
Light Green Candy Coating (Optional)
Hot Pink Sugar Crystals
To make bright blue aqua cake pop filling, tint a yellow cake box mix batter with blue food coloring before you bake it in the oven. Once baked and cooled, crumble the cake until no large lumps appear and then thoroughly mix in just enough store bought icing (a few scoopfuls) until the filling holds together when squeezed in your hand. When you’re done, place the mixture in the fridge while you complete the next steps.
Separate your white candy coating into two microwave safe bowls. Add a few pink candy coating discs to one bowl and bright blue to the other bowl (we also added a few green discs because we were shooting for a light aqua color) Heat the bowls on half power, stirring every 30 second or so until melted. Now, continue to stir in colored discs until you get the color you like. If the coating starts to become less fluid, reheat and restir a bit.
As a rough guide, we used twice as much white candy coating as we did colored.
Place a 1/4 teaspoon of hot pink sanding sugar into each cavity of your chocolate mold.
Spoon in a tablespoon or so of light pink melted coating. Take a toothpick and stir the coating and sugar a bit so that the sugar is distributed and not settled in one spot. Then, tilt the mold to swirl the coating around in an asymmetrical pattern. Wipe away any coating the goes beyond the edge of the mold.
You can flip the mold over and take a look to see if the sugar looks well distrubuted. When you’re ready, place the mold in the fridge for 5 minutes to harden.
Remove the mold from the fridge and repeat this process using the aqua melted coating instead. However, with this layer, use the back of a small spoon to make sure the coating is spread over the entire mold. Once again, place the mold in the fridge for 5 minutes, until firm.
Remove the mold from the fridge and press cake filling inside, being sure not to overfill the mold so that you have room to seal it.
Spoon more melted coating on top and use a spatula to spread it and seal the back. It might look a little bumpy, but that’s okay.
This time place the mold in the freezer for 15 minutes or so, until very firm. Then flip the gems out of the mold.
Repeat the process until you’ve used up all your ingredients. You can vary the design of the gems by swirling the two colors together in the mold at the same time instead of layering them or simply stick to a solid color for the entire gem. If you find that your cakes have rough edges after removing from the mold, use a paring knife or x-acto knife to trim them.
Now your ridiculously pretty gems cakes are ready to be served. These can be made a few days ahead and refrigerated until party time. Enjoy!
YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY:
Rose Cake Pops
Baby Rattle Cake Pops
Chocolate Flower Cake
Cupcake Terrarium
Mini Mice Cakes
Amazing!!
This is amazing! I truly love how creative the Cake Girls are, they make me seem like a genius to my little princess. Thank you!
I wish there were a better way to make these than by crumbling cake into “cake pops.” Couldn’t a cup cake be used instead? I will try to do this with different size cupcakes and get back to you!
I love this idea! Thank you for sharing this. I do wonder though, where can I find a mold like this? I have looked on Amazon and don’t find anything like these.
There’s a link in our supply list above where you can purchase the mold. Happy Shopping!
This is truly brilliant!! Love the idea and the colours! Can play around with these in different ways, so cool! Thank you Cake Girls!! You were always my favourites on TV 😀
Do you know is far ahead these can be made? Can they be left out at room temperature for a day?
Brilliant idea! So creative and delicious too! These would be perfect for my daughter’s upcoming princess party. lol Thank you!
So so dope
This tutorial was absolutely fantastic! These tasted delicious and were completely eaten up by the crowd at our Finally Sweets Kitchen cooking class. The only differences I made were in the basic ingredients by using organic white chocolate chunks and natural red, blue, and green gel pastes.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Cake Girls!
Do you know of any more gem shaped molds that i could find, to had more cake shapes to it?