Downton Abbey Collaboration- "Hat Boxes"

Downton Abbey Collaboration- "Hat Boxes"
Downton Abbey Collaboration- "Hat Boxes" Downton Abbey Collaboration- "Hat Boxes" Downton Abbey Collaboration- "Hat Boxes" Downton Abbey Collaboration- "Hat Boxes"

Hello Everyone, today I am sharing with you this very tall stacked hat box cake that I created for "A Sweet Farewell to Downton’ Collaboration.

I am a huge fan of the Downton Abbey series produced by the BBC in the UK. I especially love the Edwardian fashions of the early series. I decided to create a ‘new spin’ on the well known “hatbox”cake design. I also created a woven wafer paper sun hat, using inspiration from the fashions in the series. The hat is made entirely from wafer paper, braided together to form a long plait and then secured together over a mold and manipulated into a hat shape. It was colored after construction using a combination of yellow and brown gel food colors and a coffee/olive oil mixture. The hat also features large wafer paper garden roses. Each hat box is an individual cake tier; first covered with fondant and then over layed with printed wafer paper. The tiers are supported using a large internal structure. The hat boxes were aged in a similar fashion to the hat, by steeping coffee in hot olive oil and brushing it on in the same way tea and coffee is traditionally used to age paper. I added printed wafer paper luggage labels and ruffled wafer paper between the boxes. The lids are simply foam separators, that have been covered in fondant and then wafer paper and secured to the main structure by threading them over a large central dowel.Overall, I wanted to give the illusion that these were real hat boxes stacked on top of one another, supporting a real straw hat. The color schemes were taken from the fashions of the show, there is a scene featuring the ladies of the house in the garden. They are wearing casual day wear, with striped dresses, floral patterns and straw hats. Additionally there was a scene in the show featuring large hatboxes after the ladies of the house had conducted a shopping spree, buying new fashions, all beautifully packaged in oversized hat box.

RebekahNaomiCakeDesign

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