Patrincia, I was given no warning about the logo cake!  I took a hard look at the printed logo.  First, I felt in love with it, the subdued 3 shades of salmon and 3 shades of orange, plus the bold white lettering, and the silhouette of the hawaiian slipper sea shells. 

Second, I looked at the printed logo in all angles, even upside down, to see for hints for drawing.  The first hint was a horizontal line in the middle, lengthwise:  the top half with ‘pacific’ and the bottom half with ‘EDGE’, so I marked the line on the cake.  Then I drew two more parallel lines to the extend of the height of each word.

Then, I drew more lines, in freehand, to draw the background sea shell imprints.

So, imagine a blank frosted cake, full of lines.  After that, I started to pipe.  YES, all stars.  I used 3 shapes/sizes of stars, one for each shade of salmon and orange.  For the white words, I used plain round dots.

Lots of work for you, but fantastic job.  Do you know the piping gel transfer trick?

cake was done at the sugar free bakery, so no piping gel allowed!  I didn’t even have a chance to make a template with my computer since no warning given!  And it was a huge full sheet.

I bet they were happy you were working there that day… hope the bakery charged well for no notice!

You can do the piping gel trick with whatever you frosting you used to make those stars too.  Basically what you do is trace the image on parchment or waxed paper.  Then you flip the paper over and pipe over all the lines with a thin bead of frosting.  Then you very carefully (2 people if it’s large or floppy) press the pattern onto the cake and voila… you’ve transfered the logo perfectly.

but of course, and a method much less dramatic than what I put myself thru!

Patricia, when you transfer the piped outline, do you transfer it on to an unfrosted cake or onto the frosted cake? If the cake is frosted already I guess it would be better to have the cake refrigerated so the buttercream is hard or else it would smudge it. I have not tried this, just curious to know how it works.

Hi Rozanne - you transfer the design onto a frosted cake, and you’re right… best to do this when the cake is chilled.  There is also a “pin prick” method… you don’t pipe onto the back of the pattern, instead you place the pattern, right side up, on the chilled and frosted cake, then trace over the lines by poking through the pattern and into the frosting with a needle or thumb tack.  Then you remove the pattern and fill in the dotted lines on the cake (I find it’s a little harder to see those tiny holes than the lines of frosting from the other method).

Thanks Patricia. I had heard of the piping gel transfer method but never heard of the pin prick method. Sounds labour intensive. I guess if one is really into cake decorating it would be beneficial to invest in one of those projectors to transfer images onto a cake.

Hello, 

I thought I’d weigh in on the design transfer topic.  I know you didn’t have time to do it on a computer, but if you have time, you can size everything on the computer, and print it out actual size.  Then, what I have found works well, is to cut out the pieces, sort of like a stencil, and trace around them with a pin.  This happens on top of the base frosting.  If you start with the large outer shape, you can continue to cut sections out of the stencil to get the inner shapes.  Then you can just trace the outlines and fill them in with icing.  Or you can fill in larger areas, then chill, and place the smaller stencil sections on top, and continue the process.  It takes a while, but if you are terrified of free-handing it, it works really well, and no special equipment required.  It also helps with fine tuning the layout of objects on the cake.  Sizes, lettering arrangements, etc.  Even if you don’t do exactly what you printed out.

JennyBee

beautiful star wars, my favorite all time.

for Rose’s World Cake, I stenciled the continents just like how you describe.

=)