Swinging tweety

There are so many lovely hanging cakes getting about at the moment: chandeliers, upside down cakes, even hanging handbag cakes.

I thought I’d try my hand at a hanging cake, starting small with a birdcage. I found a great tutorial by Bake Boss on Basic Cake Armature which I based my structure on. Go and have a look at it, he explains how to prepare structures for 3D cakes. This can easily be adapted to many cake designs.

The only difference with the structure for my birdcage and Bake Boss’ method was instead of using straight all thread, I used a 12″ eye bolt. I chose the eye bolt so I had a point to hang my cake from, I figured that even though it’s not the prettiest, it was the safest for my first go! As the cake wasn’t too heavy I used a Wilton Cake Separator Plate instead of the MDF board as it already has little feet on it to help keep the bolt from making it unstable (again, have a look at the video).

12″ eye bolt

Separator plate and plastic tubing to cover bolt

Instead of threading the cake down over the top of the all thread I had to put it through the cake first (due to the eye) then fasten the bolts on either side of the board. This was a little tricky and where my engineer husband came in handy! I covered the cake in fondant before fastening to the board and eye bolt.

Hanging structure before the cake was added

After the cake was all safe and sound on the structure I airbrushed a cloud pattern onto it. I wasn’t 100% sure how it would look but was happy with the final result.

I used my new Bird with Blossoms silicon onlay, part of the Elisa Strauss Collection from Marvelous Molds to decorate the cake. This onlay is stunning either left one solid colour or hand painted as I did on this occasion.

I used the Pearl Radiance mold to top the birdcage by cutting the centre out and wrapping it around the eye bolt. I also used the Pearl Radiance mold to make the small jewel details around the base of the cage, I think they kind of look like eggs.