Almond cake, instructions for decorating

Preparation steps

• The cake itself is as simple as I said. I made a plain almond biscuit (3 eggs, 3 tablespoons of sweetener with a full top, 3 tablespoons of almonds, lemon zest), put kiwis inside and filled with icing sweetened sweetener and stabilized with xanthan gum (half a teaspoon per half liter). Everything around is coated with ganache cream (200 ml of sweet cream and 200 g of chocolate with 85% cocoa, just cool to room temperature and then coat, no need to stir, and put in the fridge to firm the cake). make the cake the day before to set well in the fridge, start decorating much earlier to dry everything well and keep them out of the fridge.
• For this I used a Cake frame, because it needs strong support that is screwed to the base otherwise it would not hold. The base is 10 inches, the cake is 6 inches. The first step is to accurately measure the height for the “wooden pole”, use a cake mold to estimate the position and height and then using cake frame rods and joints make a frame for the pole. Coat the base with green fondant, and make a pillar around the frame using a mixture of gumpaste: fondant 1: 1 light brown. Allow to dry well, and then cover the sides of the base with tape (floral or satin). Don’t forget to drill a hole through which the wire holding the bucket goes, I just slipped the chopstick until I was ready to work on the wire and the bucket. When the rack has dried well, it should be covered with fondant that looks like weathered wood. There is a Youtube video with the whole procedure here, I did the same, I just pressed woodgrain veiner over everything, and I painted it dried with powder paint and then coated it with leaf glaze. The next step is to make a bucket, and a dot over which the rope will go. I used Artistasoft for a bucket to make it lighter so then I can use a thinner wire. The handle of the bucket is a wire, and the wire is attached to another wire that goes through the dot and the joints are masked by the dot and rope.
• When the bucket has dried, paint it with silver paint dissolved in a leaf glaze. (if you use leaf glaze, the color is stable and will not peel off. Just clean the brush well with isopropyl alcohol or leaf glaze cleaner before operating it, as the leaf glaze hardens on contact with water). Fill the bucket with slightly melted and cooled isomalt, put a water lily leaf and rice paper butterfly (optional). You can write a message on the bin (in the picture happy father's day). Attach the bucket to the dots. Paint the dot and the wire as well as the coated toothpick stuck on the side as a metal bar (around which the other end of the rope goes later) with copper paint. i inserted some baking paper into the hole under the wire so as not to stain the wood by mistake. When the paint has dried, remove the paper with which you masked where it is needed and push a little fondant into the hole through which the wire goes in a wooden pole to fix the dot and let it dry. When it has dried and no longer moves, then you can camouflage the joints with a rubber band and put the rope over the dots to the bar on the side.
• Instructions for ivy leaves are here. The recipe for royal icing is here. Use royal icing for stems and attaching ivy leaves. The recipe for gumpaste thistle is here, and for foxglove is here. Also make the leaves (6 pieces) and the water lily flower (someone has my old recipe here, the principle is similar only the performance is better). Place the flowers near the stairs, the foxglove on one side and the thistle on the other (use a cake tin for orientation) and fasten with royal icing. With that the hardest and longest part is over, now just go “water” and cake.
• I also originally made koi fish, but I used sugar instead of isomalt. It looked wonderful just made in the evening. There was a hardened rubbery base into which the melted sugar was lightly poured.
• The next morning the sugar crystallized and no longer looked like clear water. So I had to start over, I managed to repeat the water lily and the water but I didn’t get to repeat which fish.
• For water in the second iteration the procedure was as follows. I lined the cake pan with aluminum foil and baking paper, melted the isomalt with a little water and heated to 171 degrees, dipped the bottom of the bowl in water to cool and stop the bubbles from coming out, and poured into the lined mold and stacked the water lily on top when a little tightened but that it was still sticky. Completely cooled, take it out of the mold, peel off the paper and foil and put on the cake, the upper surface of which is covered with fondant, the same pattern as the wall of the well, only a little green color is added. Using straws for support because the cake is light and isomalt is heavy, I put three straws in a triangle to hold the isomalt evenly. Then coat the sides with fondant (gray marble pattern, embossed cobblestone veiner). Place the cake on a prepared base (I usually stick with a little melted chocolate to keep it from moving, and add moss (crumbled green biscuits) and royal icing grass around it.