I think I missed my calling...

You know how I always say I’m not into baking? Well I think maybe I should change my mind about that and start selling cakes to people. Seriously. You know that shoe cake I made back in December? I totally put it to shame with the cake I ended up designing and decorating for my sister’s graduation party last week.

Really, my mom was supposed to decorate it (she did all the baking last Monday) but I happened to be home sick with a really bad headache on Tuesday, and since I was home in the evening because of that, I offered to help her with coloring the fondant. I guess it was the least I could do, since I had dreamed up this monstrosity of a cake, in a style completely different from most of the cakes that she does. And then, it went from me helping, to me decorating and putting together the whole thing.

My idea was to make a topsy-turvy, whimsical cake that would really stand out. I started by googling some images of similarly shaped cakes. These are what I found:
I decided that three tiers would work out well… and as for the design and color scheme on it, I wanted it to look similar to the invitation I designed for the occasion:
So I sent over the images and design to my mom… and like I said, I happened to be home and offered to help. Well it quickly went from me helping, to me doing the entire thing! I started out by layering and shaping the cakes. Basically, I used three cakes for each tier- layered them with frosting (it was cream cheese frosting- to go with the carrot cake my sister requested) and then began shaping them. I started by angling the top of the tier, and once that was done, angling the sides, so in the end it was shaped like this:
The only thing you have to be careful of is that each tier above the bottom tier has to be angled on the bottom as well- and angled in the opposite direction of the top angle.Then I colored the fondant- I wore gloves this time! Basically, you just put a couple drops of icing color in it, and then knead it in until it is uniform. Then, I rolled it out and began laying it over the cakes and smoothing it.Once all three tiers were covered, my mom began explaining how to support the layers. Each cake is on a cakeboard, cut precisely to match the bottom edge of each cake, and that gets placed on four wooden dowel rods that are inserted into each of the bottom two layers- you have to trim the dowel rods to be the exact height of the cake they are in. Once all of your layers are in place, you use a dowel rod that has been sharpened with a pencil sharpener on one end, and carefully insert it straight down through all the cakes. You can see the end of it sticking out of the top of my tiered cake in this photo.Once that was done, I began cutting flowers and other decorations out of sheets of rolled fondant using an x-acto knife. Little by little, I built up my design.This is what it looked like in the end:For the party, we topped it with some fresh flowers in matching shades of white and bright orange. And as an added bonus, everyone asked my mom “Dilphia, you made that?” when they saw it, to which she surprised them by saying “Nope, Brenda did!”

Now, I want to make more cakes!