Dirt Bike Helmet Birthday Cake. Yellow Cake filled with LemonCurd Buttercream.

The first cake of the week was quite the challenge for me. A gift to a dirt bike enthusiast husband from his loving wife, I had no idea what one of these helmets actually looked like in real life. Fortunately, for me, Google came to my rescue and I was able to look at several different views of this type of helmet. At least enough to be able to replicate it well enough that the Birthday Guy not only knew what the cake was supposed to be but was fascinated enough to ask me how it was made. Success! Now onto the second cake of the week, my grandaughters 1st Birthday Cake!

Top tier dark chocolate cake with dark chocolate buttercream filling. Bottom tier lemon chiffon cake with lemoncurd buttercream filling. Covered in vanilla marshmallow fondant and decorated with a fondant owl and real ribbon trim.

The theme of the party is Look Whoooo's One! So I decided to sculpt an owl out of fondant to match the owl on the decorator plates. Since this is also a party our event company was working, and my oldest daughter the hostess, I had access to all of the party decorations well ahead of the party so plenty of time to design the perfect cake for the decor. So the secret to this cake is that the owl was made two weeks ahead of time from fondant and then allowed to dry in place before the party. The tiers are covered in pink fondant and then covered again with the white scalloped fondant. This second layer had to be thin since you don't want the amount of icing to effect the taste of the cake inside. It's also a heavy medium, something that the lemon chiffon cake almost couldn't handle and if you look closely you will see that one side of the cake settled after decorating a little bit more than the other side making the cake a little bit crooked. A nice reminder that when decorating cakes you have to remember that you artistic medium is CAKE and it can move and shift and compress way after you are done decorating it. Oddly enough the tiers were level but just not straight up and down on the sides. All in all though, we were all very pleased with the cake. The guests were amazed and it tasted SO good that most of the guests went back for more. Always a good sign that the inside was at least as good as the outside. And that is an important goal for me in my work...not just to look good but to taste fantastic!

Next week is vacation for me after a long summer FILLED with cakes. The week after could also be vacation but I think I'm going to give that demo cake one more try and hope life doesn't step in the way so I can share it with all of you!

Cat