Here is a 70th birthday cake idea I choose and decorated for a close friend’s mum recently. This dear friend of mine whom I have known since my college days requested me to make a simple fondant covered cake for her mom’s 70th birthday. She wanted to have a special celebration with close family members to mark the memorable special occasion for her mom and wanted the cake to be special too. Having said that, she was not too picky about the design and only requested a single-tiered cake covered in fondant with a simple maroon themed design.
So I suggested a few designs and she picked one with a floral theme. And this was how the 70th birthday cake turned out:
70th birthday cake for my friend’s mom
Deciding between white and ivory
There is a bit of a story behind this 70th birthday cake. It was originally supposed to be covered in white instead of ivory as in the picture above. That was what my friend wanted anyway. And at the back of my mind, I knew I had enough stock of white fondant to cover the cake. So I did not check on it until just one day before the order was due.
And I realized (at night that is!)then, when I opened my fondant container that I forgot to seal the bag when I opened it the last time I used it which was like 2 or 3 weeks ago. To my horror, the fondant was already crusted on the outside. And I knew it was not going to work for the cake. And there was no way for me to get another batch because it was already 7pm and I promised I would deliver her the cake the next day.
I quickly thought of an alternative and decided to cover the birthday cake with butter icing. I couldn’t even make my own at that time as I did not have enough stock of icing sugar and gelatin.
So I called up my friend to ask if she was ok with butter icing. She agreed but I could sense that she was not 100% ok with it. I felt really horrible for having to disappoint her and decided to go through all my fondant containers one more round to see if I had any white or any other colors that would work with Maroon.
The solution
I did not find any white, but had enough ivory colored fondant to cover the cake. And I knew ivory is a pretty color. So I called her up again and told her not to worry, I had the issue sorted out.
That was quite a few hours of stress I went through and reminded me of how planning well ahead and checking on stock well ahead of time is very very important.
Ok, so lets get on with this 70th birthday cake idea.
How to Make a 70th Birthday Cake
Main supplies for the 70th birthday cake:
- Cake – this was a 7 inches round cake and measured 4 inches high. I baked the cake using my marble cake recipe.
- Buttercream – I used buttercream to fill the cake as well as to crumb coat it.
- Fondant – The entire cake was covered in Satin Ice Ivory. The cake board was covered in maroon (a mix of red and black fondant). I used the same color for the small blossoms on the cake as well as the cake border.
- Gum Paste– I used gum paste to make the roses on the cake as well as for the lettering on the cake. To achieve the deep shade of maroon, I tinted my white gum paste with a combination of Americolor Maroon and Americolor Electric Purple .
- Floral wire – I used 18 gauge wire for the roses.
- Lollipop sticks – these were used to insert the wire on the gum paste roses before putting the roses on the cake.
- Gold dragees – these were purchased from a local cake decorating supplies shop.
- Fondant extruder – I used this tool to pipe out the rope border for the cake.
- 5 petal flower plunger cutter
- Simple blossom cutter with veinerHydrangeas petal cutter and veining mold.
- FMM Sugarcraft Tappit Block Letters and Numbers cutter
- Gold ribbon
- Fondant glue and shortening
Assembling the cake
The roses
- I used white gum paste and tinted it with a combination of maroon and electric purple food colors. I wanted the rose petals darker on the inside towards the center and slighter lighter on the outer petals.
- And I used a Styrofoam ball as the core in making these roses. Click here for my full tutorial on how to make gum paste roses. The tutorial does not use Styrofoam balls, so if you plan on using them for your roses, you would need to attach them to your floral wire as shown. I prefer to apply hot glue to my wire before inserting it into the Styrofoam balls. This way, the foam balls remain totally secured to the wire.
Baking the cake
- Next was the cake itself. I baked the cake in 2 separate tins, and once baked and completely cooled down, I levelled and sandwiched them with buttercream. And then I gave the cake a crumb coat before covering it with fondant.
- After that, I covered the cake board. For the cake board, I used Satin Ice Red and added a little black to it. I started with very little black and kept adding it little by little until I got the right hue.
Lettering on the 70th birthday cake
- The next step was getting the lettering done for the cake. I used FMM Tappit letter and number cutters to cut out the birthday message in gum paste. I used the same color that was used to make the roses.
- After the lettering, I prepared the rest of the flowers for the cake. I made them with fondant and used a combination of Ivory and 2 shades of Maroon for these. I had a total of 4 different types of flowers on the cake.
- The first two largest ones were the hydrangeas and simple blossom. Click here to see how to make the hydrangeas and here for the simple blossom flowers. The other 2 types of flowers on the cake were slightly smaller ones. Both these flowers were cut using my 5 petal plunger cutters. Of these two, I veined the larger ones using the same veining mold as my simple blossom flowers. And left the smaller ones plain.
Assembling the cake
- Once I had all the deco pieces ready, I assembled the 70th birthday cake. I started with the roses, followed by the lettering on the cake and then the swirls.
2 pretty roses on the 70th birthday cake
- I rolled and shaped the swirls by hand and attached them to the cake with shortening.
Block alphabets in gum paste, on the 70th birthday cake
- Once all the swirls were done, I put on the flowers. I used glue for the flowers to make sure they are totally secured to the cake. This was because some of the flowers were placed on the cake edges and had I used shortening, there is no guarantee that the flowers will stay in place where transporting the cake.
Simple sugar flowers on the 70th birthday cake
White flowers on the 70th birthday cake
- After the flowers, I attached the gold ribbon and added the red rope border around it. I attached these with glue.
- And finally, I added the gold dragees randomly on the cake edges. I did not use any glue to put these on the cake, I merely pressed them into the fondant to hold them in place.
And that’s it. A 70th birthday cake idea for a charming lady.
Top view of the 70th birthday cake
Hope you enjoyed this. Happy Decorating 🙂
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