Traumatic Tiered Cake Experience

As a pseudo beginner cake decorator (I've been at it for about a year now), I had to at some point take on the challenge of a tiered cake. And I must say...this cake was a challenge. I created this spiderman cake for a kid's birthday party and unfortunately, kids and fondant don't mix...they just dont really like it and I can't say I blame them. Sooo frosting it was, and so I was already out of my "just cover it up with some fondant" comfort zone. I made some big time rookie mistakes with this cake, but I guess you've got to start somewhere. I did a good deal of research on how best to create tiered cakes so I knew enough to put dowels in the bottom layer in order to hold the weight BUT my bottom cake was not as level as it should have been. And, to make things easier during the party, I had the top tier on a cake circle but because the second layer was uneven...the top layer was tittering on top and I had about a half centimeter gap of space between the two cakes...YIKES! So I created a night yellow band to cover up this unsightly space and drew some frosting spiders on it. Lesson learned, make sure your bottom cake is level, you can imagine how frightening that car ride was for me. But I must say, the cake was delivered to a very excited Spiderman fan birthday boy.

cake central

Ever check out Cake Central? I'd definitely recommend as a resource for cake tips and project inspiration. The site is a central location for everything cake from recipes, to ideas, to articles...and I've been browsing thorough lately looking for project ideas. Check it out!    cakecentral.com

Baseball Cap Cake

My first Baseball Cap cake....

I had bought a Wilton sports ball pan and wanted to try out the baseball cap cake. I used a 6 inch pan and one half of the sports ball pan to create the dome part of the cake, and I filled the cake with buttercream. I actually found this cake to be pretty simple, just a lot of detailing needed to be done (but that's my favorite part anyway).

Creating the Cake
After filling and frosting the cake I colored my Fondant to get as close to the "Yankees blue" as possible. I covered the cake in Fondant, and cut the Yankee logo out of Fondant as well (just traced it from an image I found on the internet). I also found an image of the MLB logo on the back of the hat and did my best to draw that by hand. Using a paintbrush and some gel food coloring I painted the Logo half blue and half red like the real thing.

Prior to putting these pieces on the cake I had to do the hat stitching. I had read online that Wilton sells a "stitching tool" but I couldn't find that in any stores, so i created the "stitching" using the end of a crocodile clip because it had the perfect half moon shape. It was important to keep a steady hand though. To create the "vent holes" in the top of the cap I rolled six small balls of fondant, flattened them between my fingers, and pressed the end of the skinny paintbrush into them. All extra pieces were attached to the cake using gum paste glue (real easy to make...put a piece of gum paste into a shallow bowl of water).

For the hat brim, I traced the brim of a real hat onto wax paper and then cut the brim out of fondant using the wax paper template. It was also important to use the empty half of the sports ball pan to make sure the brim would fit securely to the edges of the round cake. I saw some recommendations online that you let the brim dry a few days in advance to create "bended brim look" but I was going for more of a fitted hat look and I think it came out just fine. Although I attached the brim using gum paste glue, I wouldn't recommend doing that because it created a glossy line where the brim attached and since it is made of fondant it wasn't really going anywhere anyway. I then used the same tool to create three lines of stitching along the brim. I found it so helpful to look at an online image of a baseball cap while I was working on this cake, and Im sure it would be even easier if you have a baseball cap lying around the house.

Break into cake decorating, even if you are on a budget

These are some of the cakes that I created during the Wilton class, the whole third level is dedicated to making flowers using gum paste (gum paste allows you to mold the flowers and it also dries hard like a rock...gum paste is also great because it can be rolled very thin which make it look so realistic)