My husband was so excited to be able to host his whole family for Father’s Day here at our new house in Austin, TX. He grew up in San Antonio, which is only an hour away, but he’s been living in the Southeastern US for 20 years, so he is back ‘home’. I not only wanted to make a very special cake, that honored his father plus all the other fathers in his family, but I also had a couple of ‘ulterior motives’. I wanted to try some new decor techniques, & I wanted to taste test a new recipe of red velvet cake that uses NO food color, but instead uses beets to give it that red color. I figured family are the best test subjects, right? :-)

The GORGEOUS print on the top tier is NOT mine. It is an edible image of the original painting called ‘Sailing’, by the fabulous Canadian artist Osnat Tzadok, of www.Osnatfineart.com. .I knew I wanted a boat theme with a LOT of color, so I was searching online for ones that I liked when I found this one. I contacted Osnat & she graciously gave permission for me to use her image, & even provided me with high resolution files. Please do yourself a favor & go view her paintings, I guarantee you’ll be happier for it! So beautiful! I felt the simplicity of the horizontally-pleated black bottom tier set off the colors perfectly.

Since this cake needed to be masculine, I didn’t want to use any flowers or anything that was too feminine. I thought coral would be the perfect solution! It’s gorgeous, fits the theme, is super colorful, & still very masculine in nature. I used the technique of pouring isomalt over ice, by the lovely Peggy Tucker of School of Cakeology, LLC, to create the coral. I made my own mold from an old-school Tupperware lid to create the lovely coral ‘flowers’, poured isomalt on them in swirls of color & then formed them by hand.

The top tier is the Beet-colored Red Velvet cake, filled with an Oreo-chocolate chip-cream cheese buttercream. (Oh yeah, it’s as awesome as it sounds!) The bottom tier is Italian Cream Cake with cream cheese, pecan, coconut filling. So, how did the Beet-colored Red Velvet cake go over? Well, I have no pictures to show you & not a crumb left! Score!!! Huge hit, & nobody could tell at all. They didn’t believe me when I told them, & even then, they didn’t care!