Disney Themed Mother's Day Cake

Happy Mother's Day USA! Hope you all found a fun way to celebrate...even if it was just finding "me" time and a way to relax. We had a huge family party with a very special theme to celebrate and the cake pictured above is the cake I made for the occasion.

My mom has a "big" birthday this year and for the past few years she's been talking about going back to Disneyland. So we, as a family, decided to take her for her big birthday to Disneyland, as a family vacation. So we gathered up as much of the family as we could, some live out of state, some couldn't attend, and invited them all for Mother's Day Dinner. Mom had no idea that the second reason was to surprise her with the birthday gift/vacation. It was a wonderful surprise, we took her breath away, and at the end of the dinner were able to enjoy the cake!

Now with the cake it was a bit hard to come up with a design since it was a "big" birthday cake, a Mother's Day cake as well as a Disney themed cake. I settled on making her favorite type of cake, lemon coconut creme, and using her favorite color, yellow and topped the cake off with a fondant flower "Mickey" ears topper. Since not everyone likes coconut I made the second tier a mexican hot chocolate cake with buttercream filling. It was delicious! Now you are probably wondering what the bottom tier is...it's a dummy tier! It's sole purpose was just to make the cake design look grand!

And this is where this week's secret comes in to play. When ordering a special occasion cake, or if you are a caker yourself, when designing a cake like this one, you can use a cake dummy to boost your design rather than getting more cake than your party can actually eat. So you don't waste food and you end up with a more impressive centerpiece. Quickly, a word of caution here: using a dummy tier is not going to save you much money with your baker. This type of tier is usually priced at 80% of what a real cake would be priced since most of the work is still done on the outside of the cake dummy...the same work that is done on the rest of the cake. The only advantages to using a cake dummy is to get a grander looking cake and not wasting food. Obviously, for this design, those were two big factors on why I used it.

Now here is a second secret, if you are a caker. I use crisco all over the dummy tier if I'm covering it with fondant. This makes it easier to remove the fondant when the event is over. I don't bother with this for buttercream since it will easily wash off with hot soap and water. However, you can extend the life of your dummy if you cover it in plastic wrap first before putting on your buttercream layer.

I hope you enjoyed the cake this week as well as the story behind it. Surprising my mom and being surrounded by most of my family, including all my kids and grandkids, made this the best Mother's Day celebration ever for me.

I'll be out the next two Sundays but then returning on the 28th! I'm vacationing with my mom for two weeks in Bavaria! Yup, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Leichtenstein...a castle tour! I'm so excited to be going and seeing and doing this with my mom! When I get back I will post what I'm working on as well as a photo or two of the best of what I see on my vacation! Hope to see you back here then!

Cat