I am a bit behind on sharing my cakes with you, but I like to put time and effort into everything I share. I also get distracted very easily and often come up with a string of recipes to share. This cake is from May and I made it for my daughters first birthday. Since she is too young to ask for a specific theme, I get to experiment. The cake still needs to be fabulous because my family is expecting something great! I was inspired by this cake by Allison Kelleher of AK Cake Design. It was a total experiment since I have never done anything like this before and although I like how it came out, I have a few changes that I would make next time. I originally covered each tier in fondant and then added the ribbon stripes by wrapping them around the cake. Next time I would wrap the fondant directly on the buttercream kind of like paneling the cake. That would give me a sharper edge and less bulk. It would also save on fondant which is $$.
I had this idea of adding 3D hearts all around the bottom tier to cover up the stripes a bit and add a peekaboo effect. I rolled out some fondant pretty thin and cut strips out. Then I formed some fun and funky heart shapes and allowed them to firm up a bit on a sheet pan. Then I attached them to the cake with some royal icing, but I think next time I would use piping gel or sugar glue. Another change I would make would be making even thinner hearts, these seem a bit too chunky for me-I like light and dainty designs. After attaching all the hearts in a random fashion, I painted some of the edges in silver just to tie in the gum paste tiara cake topper.
Making the stripes is not too difficult, but I did end up with tons of multi color scraps. So I kneaded them all together and created this marbled cake board. Overall I am happy with this cake, but I would love to try it again! Maybe even with some different colors. My little Alexa was happy with it too!
Happy First Birthday!