Making A Vivienne Westwood Birthday Cake

The Orb Cake Topper

There are two parts to this particular cake, the cake its self and the cake topper which is the Vivienne Westwood symbol and logo known as the Orb.
I started the Orb by taking a large sheet of tinfoil and rolled it into a ball, a child's ball would do just as well. I used yellow and green food colouring to colour the fondant icing, which I wrapped around the tinfoil. I wanted a pearl colour for this part of the cake, the colour was a little bright to start with but with a day placed by the window the colour faded to the perfect shade with the help of the sun light.

I stuck on two ribbons of fondant around the Orb with vodka , the alcohol evaporates and doesn't leave any taste "unfortunately". The second part to the Orb is the ring which I rolled out really thinly and dried over night in a warm cupboard until hard, I made lips in the centre to attach to the Orb. I also made the cross for the top of the Orb in a similar way. Once dry I used edible paint to decorate them, adding a little glitter to add a shimmer.

To attach the pieces together I used paper clips to stick into centre, it also helped to add support to the ring.

Chocolate and Vanilla sponge 

Sliced in half sponge cake

I made up the usual Victoria sponge cake mixture and split the mix in half, adding cocoa powder to one half. I placed the mix into two separate piping bags as I wanted a rustic marbled effect to the sponge. I simply piped the mix in lines into the baking tin.

Quilt effect

A similar effect can be made by using a spoon to gently stir the sponge mix in the tin its self.

Once cooked and cooled I sliced the sponge in half and added Strawberry jam and a layer of butter cream then sandwiched the two halves together.

A liberal coating of butter cream was applied all over the surface of the sponge before laying over the rolled white fondant.

I used a metal ruler to make a quilt pattern onto the top of the cake and the end of a pen to make small indentations where the lines crossed.

The Battersea Sky line template

For the decoration around the cake I used the Battersea skyline used on many of Vivienne Westwoods bags. I first cut out a template using black card and placed it around the cake to make sure I had the measurements correct and that it gave the effect that I was looking for.

Using sugar paste I rolled it out between two pieces of cling film, I did this for two reasons. I wanted a textured surface for my sky line so once rolled I placed it on a large sushi mat and gently rolled over it to make the indentations off the mat, the cling film simply stops it sticking.

Sugar Paste Skyline on Cling film 

Once rolled out, I took off the top layer of cling film and cut out the sky line using the template while still on the bottom layer of cling film. I had to do the sky line in 3 parts to make it easier to attach to the cake. I used the cling film to help attach the sugar paste to the cake, as it was quite thin and may have warped the sky line if I tried to simply pick it up and stick it on. 

Battersea Skyline with Textured surface

Gold Ribbon added around the cake

After adding the gold ribbon around the cake I added edible silver balls to the quilting effect. I thought gold balls would be to much for this design after playing with that idea. White icing was then added around the base of the cake. Finally I placed the Orb onto the top of the cake glueing it with icing to prevent it rolling off

Marbled sponge centre of the Vivienne Westwood Cake