This one didn't turn out exactly how I had planned it out in my head, but rather a lot more of an 'improvisation along the way' kind of job. But I'm still pleased with how it turned out. And like with every cake I make, I learned a few valuable lessons along the way.
So here it is, a beautiful celebration scene for a beautiful little girl.
And here is how I did it.
My initial intention was to make a fanfetti cake like this but for some reason all my 100's and 1000's disappeared into the cake when it was in the oven ... so it's pretty much just a plain butter cake. That was the first thing that didn't go according to plan. The second was the size of the cake. I had intended to make one large block with Anya's name around the 4 sides, however the 6x6" size I made would have only been 4" tall with the 1 quantity of cake mix the recipe made. So, again I improvised and decided to cut the 2 6" cakes into 4 individual squares and make 4 blocks to spell Anya's name, as you can see below.
Next it was assembly time. I used vanilla buttercream (same recipe as I usually use) to sandwich the 2 layers of each block together and then covered each block with a layer of buttercream to form the base layer for the rolled fondant. This was a little tricky and messy but the cakes are sturdy enough to withstand a bit of handling. A good tip if you find you buttercream difficult to spread is to dip you palette knife in some hot water. Make sure you dry it off as you don't want any excess water in your buttercream, but it will make spreading it, especially around the sides of your cake a lot easier.
Next was the rolled fondant. I used Ivory for the base colour just because I didn't want it to be bright white, but you could use any colour you like. I was tempted to go with a pale yellow colour but decided to stick with the ivory as it meant one less batch to colour by hand.
I rolled out the ivory and covered each block. This once again was a bit tricky and I tried a few different methods. The one I found most successful was to cut along strip of fondant that is the width of the cake (in this case 3"x3") and then wrap it around the sides of the cake. Then cut out at 3"x3" square for the top of the cake. I used a ball tool to smooth the joins, but since I was planning to cover the sides with buttercream I knew no one would notice the join lines.
I then cut out letters (making sure I had one letter form Anya's name in each colour) from 4 different colours of fondant which I coloured using Sugarflair paste colours. Sticking them onto the 4 cakes was simple: just brush the back of each letter with a small amount of water and stick on.
All the decorations (Pooh, hunny pot and Butterflies) I made a few weeks ago and left to dry in a cardboard box on my bookshelf. I simply then stuck them around the cakes and on the board with a bit of buttercream and we are done.
All up this cake probably took me about 5 hours to make, but making the decorations ahead of time certainly saved me time last night. If I was to do it again I would also cut out the letters ahead of time as that is the time consuming part as you have to colour the fondant, roll it out and cut out the letters. There is no reason why they couldn't be done weeks ahead and left to dry.
