Many of you know my secret identity:  I’m a cake decorator by day and a blogger by… other day (and by night).  And to those who didn’t know, well, you do now.  😉

As you also may know, this blog was started as a way for me to learn new things. So, often, when someone asks me to make something new, kind of out-of-the-ordinary, or just plain old intimidating, I’ll offer to make it for them at a much lesser cost, and then use that project as an opportunity to expand my knowledge of kitchen-y things, and to take pictures and post them… HERE!

So, here I am!  This was just such a project.  This cake was made as a birthday surprise, for a young girl who loves music and all things fun and whimsical.  I designed the cake to suit her style the best I could, had it approved by her mother, and set to work.

First thing I had to do was make all of the “Extras,” since of course, they needed time to dry before I could use them on the cake.

First I made gum paste flowers, which I dusted with green petal dust and painted with edible green ink in the centers for this look:

Then I made these musical notes out of gum paste, which I let dry onto the ends of long, bendy floral wires.  I also made little white balls to use as accents.

Then of course, I baked the cakes.  I made mud cake for this one.  :]  Two 6″ layers, which I split to make a 4-layer 6″ square cake, and then one 8″ square layer, thin, to cut 4″ round layers out of.  Like so:

Once the cakes were all trimmed and ready to be filled, I had to use a cake board, cut to be a little smaller than the cake.  Then I stacked the cakes with filling, froze them, and then trimmed the frozen cakes to be the proper shape.

You’ll probably get a better idea of this process through pictures… So take a look!

Because the bottom tier had to be a stable support for the weight of the tier on top, I used a circle cutter (same size as I used to cut the top tier layers out) to cut through the top, slanted layer of the square base until I reached the next, straight layer.  Then I removed the circle of cake, so that there would be a flat surface for the top tier to sit on, but the rest of the cake still looked tilted… Which gives the illusion of the cake being topsy-turvy.

Once the cakes had been trimmed and were ready to go, they needed to be crumb coated, and then covered with fondant.

And now for the top…

 

There we go.  🙂

Once that was done, I trimmed some wooden dowels to be the correct height, and inserted them into my little circle cut-out shape to support the weight of the top tier.

Then I stacked the cakes, and used another, longer dowel to put through the whole thing and keep it together.  I made this one a little taller than the cake on purpose, since I thought it might be kinda fun to decorate the little post sticking out the top.

And here we go – from no decor to… Some decor to… EVERYTHING!  Sorry, I got carried away.  So I didn’t get more pictures of that process.  😀

And that’s it!

 

 

Hope you enjoyed this run-through of how I made this whimsy cake!  Hope you like it.  🙂  And Happy Birthday Mayghan, again.  I know your birthday was a while ago (this post has been a while in coming), but it was a pleasure to make this cake for you.  🙂

Back soon!

–Naomi

P.S.  To those waiting for my Pumpernickel bread post, check back!  It’s still coming, though a little slow in process… Christmas decorating has dominated the day, so bread baking will have to wait.  Back soon!