This past weekend, I had the pleasure of making another FASHION/MAKE-UP/GIRLY GIRL-inspired cake. Remember the red shoe cake a few weeks ago? It was for another family member in that clan. It says, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY PINK!” on the cake so I asked if I should use pink fondant to cover the cake and she said, “No, use purple”. I wasn’t arguing… I love purple 

Then something peculiar happened. The cake was for a Saturday afternoon delivery and when I covered the cake on Friday night, the colour was purple (a bit lighter than the pillow from the red shoe cake). In the morning when I woke up, the colour FADED and looked more periwinkle than purple. I realized that I had been putting the details on at a table next to a window with lots of sunlight streaming in and that’s why it faded. YES, it fades really, really quickly. I sprayed a layer of pearl luster on to give it a finished look and ta-DA! Pretty, huh?
I had a cup of periwinkle-ish frosting leftover and get this… coloured frosting INTENSIFIES over time. So here I have fondant that fades in the sunlight and frosting that intensifies/darkens with time. It’s like a really bad math problem. “If fondant fades at a rate of one shade per hour and frosting intensifies by two shades every half hour… how long will it take Jenn to lose her marbles?” umm…
WHY does purple fondant fade, you ask? It’s because purple is a combination of red and blue (knowledge from 1st grade arts+crafts class is coming in handy) and the FDA-approved RED gels are UV tolerant making it fade in bright lights. In order to stabilize it, you’ll have to add about 50% MORE red to the fondant (thus changing the hue of the purple) which doesn’t work if you want a royal purple colour. When the red of the purple fondant fades, all you’re left with is… *drum roll*… periwinkle (light purple/blue). Make sense? So in conclusion, I’m a nerd with a (formerly purple) periwinkle-coloured cake.