A Birthday, A Cake & Some Fairy Dust
A few months ago, award-winning Chicago-based cake decorator and special effects makeup artist Dina Cimarusti was offered a project unlike any she had done before. She was invited to create a one-of-a-kind cake celebrating the 121st birthday of the late Cicely Mary Barker, author and illustrator of the nearly century-old Flower Fairies book series that has sold over 7 million copies in the last 10 years alone. Cimarusti was given complete creative freedom along with Ultimate Source's new Flower Fairies Secret Garden Collection, a collectible set of tiny, weatherproof, made-for-kids figurines and accessories designed to nurture children's interest in miniature gardening.
It was Cimarusti's first exposure to the Flower Fairies series, but she was instantly drawn to both the charm of the art and to the possibilities of incorporating the fairies and their make-believe universe into a custom cake design.
"The fairy figurines look like they stepped out of Barker's illustrations with their delicate faces, colors and attention to detail, and I love that the accessories can be used to create scenes that tell stories," she said. "I don't often have the opportunity to create a 'world' when I'm working on fantasy-inspired cakes and makeup - usually I'm creating a character - so this project was an exciting new challenge for me."
She quickly decided to wrap the base of the cake in fondant colored and textured to resemble a tree stump to support the flower-and-nature theme of the garden collection, anchor the front with the collection's fairy door accessory, and hide a "Happy 121st Birthday, Cicely Mary Barker" plaque behind the door like a secret message to be discovered by fairy folk.
Then she painstakingly placed Flower Fairies like Daisy and Buttercup and accessories like pathways and the flowers associated with each fairy onto the cake canvass, adding gum paste flowers and leaves as needed to pull the scene together.
"I needed to match the colors perfectly, be sure that everything was placed where it made sense, and make it all flow so that nothing looked like it was just stuck on the cake," she noted. "I've been a cake artist for more than a decade, and I've never had to incorporate so many elements into a cake design before."
The final 11"-tall cake required 4 pounds of butter, 6 cups of flour, 10 cups of sugar, 20 eggs, and more than 12 hours of work, including 10 hours for decorating.
In the process - thanks to the collaboration between Ultimate Source in the U.S. and the Estate of Cicely Mary Barker and Penguin Random House in the UK that made the Flower Fairies Secret Garden Collection possible - Cimarusti contributed to the renewed appreciation of Barker's work worldwide. Nearly 100 years after the first Flower Fairies book was published, fairy lovers everywhere still respond to Barker's special brand of fairy magic. In our increasingly digital world, that speaks highly of her enduring appeal.