The Hawaiian birthday cake.

A few months ago I was asked to make a cake for a friend’s mum. It was an 80th Birthday cake for her friend – a lovely lady from Hawaii. Now she may have been 80 but she was larger than life and full of energy and anyone who met her wouldn’t have believed her age! So this Hawaiian birthday cake was set to be full of life and have tons of colour. The elements are all native to Hawaii and mean something to Sharon. It was so much fun to do a bright cake for grown up!

How to decorate a Hawaiian cake

The palm trees

When it comes to palm trees the trick is to make them in advance. WELL in advance. The first ones I made broke so I had to whip these ones up quickly. I think they broke becasue I was over handling them – anyway I learnt my lesson. My top tips would be-

Make more palm trees than you need then if one or two break you still have a back up. You also have a choice.
Place something long, thin and sharp at one end into the tree trunk. I made brown sausage shaped sugarpaste tree trunks and pushed a chopped down skewer into it’s centre. If it gets a bit loose use edible glue inside.
Create curved lines along the trunk with a shaped decorating tool (the second one from the left here is the one I used)
I made the leaves with an oval cutter and then folded each one in half along the length. I then scored lines and added them to the top of the tree trunk using edible glue
Make your tree with florists paste or at least add firming Tylo powder to sugarpaste to make it dry quicker and harden up nicely.
Leave your tree to harden up for as long as possible. At least three days.

The shells

When it came to making the shells I used a silicon mould. I was especially happy with the end result when my nephew Asher asked if these were the shells we had picked up from the beach a week earlier? What a compliment! Once they were out of the mould I gave them a brush with an almost dry paintbrush with a little brown paint on the tip. Each shell was given a dust of pink lustre. I started off with a white florist paste and moved onto colours for the starfish. I stuck them onto the cake with edible glue.

Hawaiian flowers

If you’re making a Hawaiian cake with flowers they have to be frangipani and hibiscus. Luckily I had my copy of Peggy Porschen’s Bloom book to hand so I could look up how to make them. I used a rose cutter for the smaller hibiscus and bought a large cutter for the big ones. Whichever size you’re making all you need to do is thin the outside edges of the petals then place them onto a palette to harden. A stamen stork was added then a little extra food colour inside each florist paste flower to make them pop out.

The frangipani was made using five petal shapes. The florist’s paste was rolled out a little thicker than usual and each petal is tucked into the previous until you have a complete flower. The flower was then placed on a piece of foam to dry out. Powder colour was used to enhance the inside of each flower. Each flower was stuck onto the cake using royal icing.

I really love how vibrant this cake turned out. Even the wording stands out. Really good fun.