After taking on the "Thousand Roses" and Ruffle cakes, I yearned for another cake to challenge me both technically and mentally. That's not to say the other cakes I've attempted were walks in the park, but both of those cakes - specifically - took lots of time, energy, patience and certainly lots of effort to complete. 

And truth be told, it made me feel good when I feasted my eyes upon the completed works. It made me feel alive..as ridiculous as that sounds!

So when my Mum showed me a YouTube video of the Ombre Cake being done, I knew that one day, I will just have to undertake the challenge! After months of putting it off, I realised it was now or never and just went for it!

My friend had requested for a small cake of any flavour and decoration and I decided that this was the opportune moment to make the Ombre. At least it wouldn't go to waste sitting in my fridge! I watched the video a couple more times, took a deep breath and finally got down to doing it.

I had prepared a double recipe quantity of the Swiss Meringue Buttercream before hand and decided to split the whole thing into three equal batches and tint them in graduating shades of red like in the video. Well two of those portions were tinted, while one remained its original shade of pale ivory. After looking at pictures of the Ombre cake, I realised that graduating shade of colour for the dots of cream were best, instead of using a combination of totally different colours.

The cake itself was a regular strawberry sponge that was a deep shade of pink (friend was nice enough to send me a picture heh!). This was sliced into three rounds and filled with strawberry jam and softly whipped cream. After a light crumb coat and 15 minutes in the fridge, the cake was ready for the Ombre makeover!

One by one, the dots of the three colours went on, got smudged on one side to create the "tail" and the process was repeated. Four long hours later, it was finally done! Thankfully, it went without any hitches or hiccups and the cream held up well in the afternoon heat that was baking the house. It wasn't perfect but nonetheless, I was over the moon!

Definitely my best creation to date!