90th Birthday Cake

This cake was for a 90th Birthday party (wow!) for my client's father. I kept the design simple and elegant, with offset square tiers wrapped in a grey marbled fondant. I used actual ribbon in black & silver to accent the tiers and for the bow on top. I made the "90" topper out of embellished wire with beads & sequins for a little sparkle. The banner in front of the second tier I made out of fondant. The whole cake was supposed to feed 80 people, but I bet they got about 100 servings (my first time using these square pans...it turned out to be a BIG cake). And speaking of cake, they went with a different flavor for each tier: vanilla cake with raspberry and bavarian cream filling, chocolate chocolate chip cake with chocolate cream filling; and lemon cake with vanilla custard filling.

I decided to take some "before" photos this time as I built this cake so that you can see what goes into the construction. Each tier of one of my cakes is made with 4 layers of cake and 3 layers of filling. First, I pipe a frosting "dam" around the top of each cake layer to keep the filling from oozing out the sides.

Then I add a thick layer of filling, and top with another layer of cake until, voila! Ready for frosting...

Next comes the layer of icing called a "crumb coat", which keeps the crumbs in place and also acts as a good adhesive for the fondant. (I heard the Cake Boss say he had to "dirty ice" a cake the other day. I think I like that term better...it sounds so much cooler and "edgy"). Then the cakes are covered in a layer of fondant, and stacked using some wooden dowels for support.

Here's the same cake before all the accessories. Also, you can enjoy this rare peek into my disastrous work space, complete with the highchair (and breakfast) in the background and the electronic toys on the fridge. And no, it's not Halloween, but I had to break out the big guns for this size cake: my stylish vinyl table cloth.

Then the final touches... (here I'm painting on a thinned frosting "paste" to glue the ribbon to the fondant) The final step, however, is finding someone to carry that cake for you (man, do they get heavy!) It's kind of strange to think that in just a few hours from this point, someone took a knife and destroyed my piece of art! Hope you guys enjoyed it! xoxo