Christmas Lights Cake

Instructions

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1. - Step 1: Prepare Royal Icing
2. - We'll start off with the fun part, making decorations! These lightbulb decorations will need time to dry, so be sure to do this step at least one day in advance.
3. -
   Using meringue powder, prepare a batch of royal icing to thin/flooding consistency. Use icing colors to tint icing as follows:
   • 1/3 cup Navy Blue icing (combine Sky Blue and Violet icing colors)
   • 1/3 cup Bright Red icing (combine Christmas Red and Lemon Yellow icing colors)
   • 1/3 cup Lime Green icing (combine Lemon Yellow and a touch of Kelly Green icing colors)
   • 1/3 cup Teal icing (combine Sky Blue and Kelly Green icing colors)
   • 1/3 cup Bright Orange icing (combine Orange and a touch of Lemon and Red-Red icing colors)
   • 1/3 cup Ivory icingReserve remaining icing white.
4. - Step 2: Pipe Lightbulb Decorations
5. - Cover a cake board with parchment paper. Prepare one decorating bag with tip 1 and white icing.
6. - Prepare six decorating bags with tip 3 and fill separately with Navy Blue, Bright Red, Lime Green, Teal, Bright Orange and Ivory icing.
7. - Working with one color at a time, pipe 24 puddle dots on the parchment paper-covered board, about 3/8 in. wide. Then, use a toothpick to pull one edge of the dot to create a lightbulb shape.
8. - Immediately use the white icing in the tip 1 bag to pipe a small dot of white on the side of each lightbulb, creating a highlight. Use a toothpick to elongate the white dot down the side of the lightbulb.
9. - Use the white icing to also pipe a little dot at the top of the lightbulb (opposite the point).
10. - Repeat with all 6 icing colors for a total of 144 bulbs (24of each color). Let your icing bulbs dry at room temperature overnight.
11. - Step 3: Bake and Stack Your Cake
12. - Follow the instructions on your recipe to make four 6 x 2 in. cake layers.
13. - Once cooled, trim and stack your cake layers using white buttercream frosting. Your cake should be about 7 in. high.
14. - Step 4: Ice and Decorate!
15. - Using Rose and Kelly Green icing colors, tint 3 cups buttercream Pale Pink, then ice your cake smooth with the Pale Pink frosting.
16. - Prepare a decorating bag with tip 2 and white buttercream. Pipe 4 scalloped lines around your cake. There should be about 1 ¾ in. between each row.
17. - To get even scallops, use a toothpick to lightly divide the top of your cake into 12 sections. Once your scalloped lines have been piped, you can use a spatula to smooth out the top of your cake again.
18. - Using a decorating brush and gold metallic cake paint, paint the dot at the top of all the lightbulbs gold. Let the paint dry for about 5minutes.
19. - Once the paint has dried, attach the lightbulbs to the scalloped lines.
20. - Finally, add a border of swirls around the top of your cake by preparing a bag with tip 1M and white buttercream. For a little sparkle, top the swirls with sparkling sugars.

Notes