Hello, I am new to Daring Bakers. Is this the famous Daring Bakers monthly challenge?

Autumn to me means the change of colors. I love how the fall foliage changes to these different hues and it let's you know the holidays are coming.

The process was smooth for me since I started making my tree branches and fence pieces as soon as I saw the contest. The branches and fence pieces are made with Nicholas Lodges' gumpaste and were allowed to dry before I painted them with gel paste and vodka.

The cake is a pistachio cake that I adapted from Martha Stewart's Yellow cake recipe. I used homemade fondant flavored with pistachio extract and all the leaves are made from this. The tree trunk was made from modelling chocolate so it could hold up the branches.

Thanks for looking.

Thanks Devona! I've added your contact information to our files for the contest but I removed your personal information from this post for privacy purposes.. sorry for the mistake in the rules. Lis xoxo
"The Beginning of it All"

Thanks Lis!

Hi all,

Here's my non-North American entry (but I wanna go to Noo York!!) . It's called Blue Magic because I find the colours of Autumn really magical. And in Australia, crisp Autumn days bring with it clear blue skies that seem to stretch forever. You can read more about the whole process when I post it up on the blog soon.

Three photos:
one of your undecorated (no frosting, no fondant) cake base, one of the partially decorated cake, and one of the final result.

The cake base - a stack of three home made 9"cakes flavorued with cinnamon and nutmeg - flavours I associate with Autumn. It's sandwiched with maple buttercream.

Covering with fondant/ready-to-roll icing. Didn't have any actual photos of myself decorating this because hubby was at work and no one else at home to handle the camera . There's my arm reflected in the spoon though!

All done. I made every single leaf myself out of modelling paste mixed with fondant. The cake is painted using a a mix of Wilton SKy Blue paste colour + vodka. The tree is modelling paste + fondant as well.

Cheers,
Sharon Raj,
Thanks Sharon! I've added your contact information to our files for the contest but I removed your personal information from this post for privacy purposes.. sorry for the mistake in the rules. Lis xoxo

@ Deeva, You are right about the evaporating. Vodka dries much faster so the painting or color has no time to 'run'.

Here's my daring baker cake challenge, 'Squirrel Scene'! I'm really annoyed with myself for not getting the completely 'naked' cake, I hope the crumb coating is enough for you to see that it is cake underneath

I made Rose Levy Berenbaum's Pumpkin cake with walnuts and burnt orange silk buttercream. The flavor was wonderful but the buttercream was a very involved recipe, creme anglais and a meringue!!

The buttercream was a little difficult to work with, so instead of a light sprinkling of autumn foliage, I decided to cover it with leaves, which I cut out of fondant. I made my little squirrel out of homemade chocolate marshmallow fondant, hence him being a little squat!

Here I am adding the finishing touches of a little sparkly dust suspended in cheap gin, which gave a lovely sparkle and shine!!



Thanks so much for a great challenge, I'd love to go to New York. I'll send my address to the organisers since its really not safe to share addresses on an open forum like this. Thanks!

Hey there... I baked a cake & decorated it, everything from scratch. I lloved doing this, even though I know I don't qualify as I don't live in the States/Canada.

Have got my Cinnamon Buttercream Autumn Cake posted over at my blog, with a teeny video too http://www.passionateaboutbaking.com/2009/11/cinnamon-buttercream-autumn...

This is my entry for the cake competition.

My inspiration:
Autumn is symbolized by leaves for almost everyone, but what makes the season truly wonderful for me is the experience of being out in the elements. Taking a walk on a crisp foggy morning through a technicolor shower of leaves as they fall from the turning trees above. Kicking through the crunchy leaves below and picking up a few to discover that each one is breathtaking in its beauty and design. I wanted to recreate this magical experience with this cake.

The process:
As a graphic designer, I started this cake on the computer to determine scale and colors. I started making leaves out of gum paste and painting them with gel food coloring about a week prior to the cake. The next step was making the tree trunks and branches out of gum paste and leaving them to dry. The cake itself is a box mix frosted and layered with standard buttercream frosting. The cake was then covered by fondant. The trees and leaves were assembled using royal icing to make a sturdy adhesive.

More photos are available at
www.marreel.com/autumncake

Thanks for hosting such a wonderful competition!
Katie

I have titled my entry: Seattle Fall. I wanted to decorate a cake which reflected the Fall season here in Seattle. All over the city there are leaves in hues of purple, brown, red, orange, yellow, and green; they are covering yards, sidewalks and streets. It's quite beautiful - especially the various types of Maple trees that change colors. What I love the most about Fall are the stark contrasts among the various leaves. I was inspired to re-create these leaves to look as realistic as I could.

I baked a two layer 9" chocolate cake, filled it with caramel sauce, and frosted it with ganache. I then used both chocolate fondant and gum paste leaves to decorate the cake using cookie cutters. With both types of leaves I made a leafing/vein impression by rolling the fondant/gum paste leaves on the back side of an actual leaf.

With the gum paste leaves, I set them on a crumbled piece of foil to dry. This way each leaf would have a random look, such as curled edges, similar to the way leaves naturally look on the ground. I used "AmeriColor #135 Gold" colored gel paste to slightly tint the gum paste as a base. From there I used "CK Chartreuse, Red Terracotta, and Sunflower" colored pedal/luster dust with vodka to paint each one.

For the actual decorating I symmetrically lined chocolate fondant leaves as a border and covered the top part of the cake with the gum paste leaves.

The final outcome was a stunning and beautiful Fall decorated cake. My daughters thought the leaves were real and asked if they could take them to school for show and tell.

Thank you for hosting such a great challenge! I plan to write a post about how to make the gum paste leaves on my blog soon and will post back here when I do with a link.

-Alice

*Ok, I just posted a link with more pictures and how to make the gum paste leaves I used on this cake. The post can be found here.

Ok, so I only looked at this post about 3 days ago and went "Oooo!". Autumn is by far and away my favorite season, so this is so awesome. When I think of autumn, I think of beautiful, colorful, crunchy leaves (crunchy is required for stepping on), and... turkeys. Yes, Autumn makes me think of turkeys. I call it... "Hide and Turkey".

So, for some naked-ness.

And one of me smoothing the fondant. I have no table, so it was hard for my mother to take my picture while working, as I had to do everything on the counter.

And my finished cake!

I love turkeys.

I had so much fun making the leaves... breaking some leaves, and making my tiny, disproportionate turkey.

The name of my submission is Fall Fun. Growing up we loved to rake big piles of leaves and jump right in and hide under them and just play. Of course, everyone knows that "orange" is the unofficial color of autumn ;o)

I was born and raised in Canada but now live in NC, USA. I became a US Citizen one year ago this week. I was confirmed in Raleigh, NC. Raleigh is called The City of Oaks. My inspiration came from my playful childhood memories and my new adult memory of my dual citizenship. I combined the leaves from Canada (maple) and Raleigh (oak leaves and acorns) on an orange fondant covered cake to create my Fall Fun submission.

Yes, the acorns are edible. My son woke up and asked why I had acorns with my leaves. He couldn't believe they weren't real. He was excited to learn that he could eat one because they are made from fondant. I combined colored fondant and rolled it out to create the fall colors in my leaves and let them dry over foam pieces to give them shape and movement. I then brightened up some of the colors with powder food color and pearl dust.

Okay I am a little embarassed to post mine with all these fabulously stunning cakes.

Pomegranates are something my father bought every Fall, just before Thanksgiving. So while it says Fall to me, it may not be speaking Fall to everyone else but I will go ahead and share it anyway.

Clearly I need to up my skills.

For me, Fall starts with our annual Octoberfest parade. The kids not only look forward to all of the floats, bands and characters but also the first hot chocolate of the season. And what better way to try to win a trip to the Big Apple, I thought, than making a big cup of hot chocolate and big Oreo cookie. Here's my entry called "Saturday morning in October".

I started with my 9" cake on top of a dummy and covered both in fondant. Milk chocolate frosting became the cocoa and regular sized marshmallows became the mini marshmallow topping. Cheers!

I've enjoyed looking at all of your cakes - they turned out very well!

I had the best intentions, but then I learned what autumn truly means to me!

Check out my blog post for the rest...
The Daring Kitchen Cake Deco Challenge

sorry its late but this cake was inspired by the fall leaves and cranberries and branches.

We have a winner!!!

http://thedaringkitchen.com/in-the-kitchen/and-winner

Congrats to the winners. Enjoy your prizes.