+04-30-10.jpg "Sugar Sweet First Communion Rosary Chalice Cake")
I really love how this cake turned out! My husband's coworker's 8-year-old daughter wanted me to make her 1st Communion Cake. A few months prior, I had made her a Minnie Mouse Christmas Birthday Cake and she didn't forget - how sweet is that!
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Being Catholic and loving anything pink and dainty, I came up this cake design. The cake was a 9” round white almond sour cream cake filled with white chocolate mousse, covered in white chocolate ganache then marshmallow fondant.
The chalice was made out of gum paste using a little plastic cup as a mold and the stem was built up from 2 separate gum paste pieces I sculpted freehand. Once it was all dry, I dusted the chalice in Wilton White Pearl Dust to give it some shine. The Wilton pearl dust is one of my favorite powders. It has a nice luster and can easily be dry-dusted over gum paste or painted on with vodka.
.jpg "Sugar Sweet gum paste chalice and communion bread (close up)")
I also filled the chalice with 3 Communion Bread disks made from gum paste.
The pink and white blossoms were made with a 5 petal cutter in 3 different sizes. I used a hard candy diamond mold to hold and form each blossom as they dried. Once dried, I dusted each with Wilton Pink Pearl Dust and Wilton White Pearl Dust.
My favorite feature is the Rosary wrapped around the entire cake. I used royal icing to pipe each bead and then painted them with Wilton White Pearl Dust. To evenly space each section of the rosary around the cake, I drew up a template using a 5-point star. I marked the cake using a push pin marking each bead spacing around the cake so everything was perfectly lined up and evenly placed around the cake.
+04-30-10+(right).jpg "Sugar Sweet First Communion Rosary Chalice Cake")
The cake sat over a square baseboard covered in very light, pink fondant and adorned with a pink, satin ribbon. I added some blossoms to the board to dress it up a bit. I was happy with how beautiful the cake turned out and hope she enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed making it…I couldn’t help but think back to my 1st Holy Communion and how special that day was.
The cake was crumb coated in white chocolate ganache the upside down method. See how it's done under this post, Covering a Cake in Ganache. Using a ganache crumb coat has become my favorite method to level and crumb coat or torte a cake. Once the ganache sets, you'll have a nice, firm surface to work with and the edges remain beautifully sharp and crisp. Try it!