Strawberry Swirl Cake

I recently volunteered to make a cake for my sister-in-law's friend. It was for her daughter's birthday, and fortunately, her daughter knew exactly what she wanted for the cake (which is really helpful for me). She really loves strawberries, so I was asked to put a lot of strawberries on the cake, along with white flowers. She also wanted green frosting or fondant, and since I have always just done fondant, I decided to try frosting it without covering it with fondant. She showed me a picture of a cake that had swirls of frosting on it, so I attempted to frost similar swirls on the cake.

This was actually a lot of fun! Once I was able to get the hang of it, I enjoyed piping the swirls. I'm happy to know that I can use this frosting method!

Here are some pictures of the finished cake.

The flowers were made out of fondant, and were placed into egg trays to dry in a curved position. I used a shell tool to create texture on the large flowers.

I also made sure to crumb coat the cake before piping the swirls. Some people have said that it isn't necessary, but I'm glad that I went through the extra effort- I could see that crumbs might have mixed into the swirls if I hadn't, and the crumb coat helped to make the cake extra firm and stable.

The cake went into the fridge anytime I wasn't working on it- after I layered and filled it, after I did the crumb coat, after I piped the swirls, and before I put the decorations on.

Since I needed to wait until last minute to put the decorations on, and the frosting swirls were hardened by then, I just piped a bit of fresh frosting on the bottom of each decoration before putting it on. I made sure not to press the decorations into the cake, because I didn't want them to crack the swirls.

And that's about it!
Thanks for reading, have a great Wednesday!