Oh hey, remember when I said I was going to show you how to make this cake? Right…I finally got around to it. Let’s jump right in.
This cake was two tiers – the bottom tier was pumpkin chocolate chip flavored and the top was peanut butter flavored. Yum yum. The pumpkin chocolate chip was amazing (if I do say so myself). I may have snagged a few of the scraps…
We started with the bottom tier. The cake really was a lovely shade of orange. I made two 10″ cakes.
We measured out some nice creamy peanut butter for the batter on the bottom tier.
For the top tier I made two 6″ cakes.
Once the cakes were baked and cooled, I turned them out and leveled them off. Between each layer of cake was a filling of chocolate icing. As you can see, my level skills need some work, but don’t worry, it’ll all work out with the next step.
Next, I covered the cake in a generous layer of chocolate icing, being sure to fill in all the gaps. Since I’m going to be covering it in fondant, I didn’t worry too much about making a perfectly smooth finish.
I finished off this layer by covering it in some smooth red fondant. That white handled thing works like a charm to make sure there are no lumps or bumps in my cake. The extra fondant is then trimmed using a pizza cutter.
The peanut butter cake was then stacked…
…and iced…
And covered in a layer of chocolate fondant. Oh hey! There’s that pizza cutter I was talking about. Works pretty well, eh?
Then it’s time to get ready to stack the cake. I use straws to help support the upper layer so it doesn’t sink into the bottom layer. Some people use wooden dowels, some people use plastic dowels, I use straws because they’re cheap, easy to find, and you can cut them with scissors.
Speaking of which…then I trimmed the straws.
Finally, the little cake was stacked on top of the big cake. I don’t actually put anything between the two tiers. Mainly I rely on gravity and whatever external decorations I use to keep everything together. It’s worked pretty well for me so far.
For the cloth that drapes over the top layer, I just rolled out a bunch of different colored fondant and cut it into squarish shapes. Each piece was then just arranged on the cake to look like rolls of cloth.
After I finished draping the cloth, I looked at dozens and dozens of photos of henna designs. I honestly had no idea where to start with it, so I sort of just jumped in and freehanded the piping. I used royal icing to pipe the design so I wouldn’t have too many drips and drops. Unfortunately, I got so wrapped up in it I forgot to take any pictures of the process. Oops.
On her blog, Leah talked a bit about a cow, so I decided to create a little cow figure to add some whimsy to the cake. I thought he was pretty adorable, don’t you? He was formed completely out of fondant.
After I’ve finished decorating the cake, to clean it up a bit and get rid of some corn starch and smudges, I spray the cake with a mixture of vodka and gold shimmer powder. Don’t worry, the shimmer is edible. Vodka works well because it dries quickly so the fondant doesn’t end up with some weird sticky texture.
I use a sweet airbrush I got at a craft store to spray down the cake. I used to use a giant, industrial air compressor, but I’ve upgraded (downgraded?) to a cake-sized, counter-top-sized air compressor that works like a charm.
Look how shiny and pretty the cow is now!
And finally…the finished product! I loved making this cake. It was colorful and fun and I had so much fun getting creative and coming up with something great. Thanks Kay! Thanks Leah!