Happy Sunday! And Happy 2nd Birthday to our Grandson Parker! Parker is a huge fan of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and a Super Fan of Mickey Mouse himself. 

To get an idea of what a huge fan of Mickey our little man really is, here is the photo of the first time Parker and Mickey met (click on the photo to see the larger version):

Parker was only about six months old and, yes, Mickey obsessed even then. So when it came time to decide upon what design of cake to make for his second birthday, the first birthday he would really be a participant in celebrating, we just knew it had to be Mickey Mouse themed.

As I have mentioned before, you have to be careful when it comes to Disney items and copyright law. Now for this cake I'm pretty safe since it's for my own grandson but I still used a plastic licensed character for the top of the cake and didn't make one out of fondant. Just to be safe.

The cake is lemon chiffon, Parker's favorite cake, with lemon curd butter cream filling. The filling is so good I swear we could just eat it like a dessert pudding all by itself! And it's incredibly easy to make. Are you ready for this top secret recipe? 1:1 ratio of lemon curd to butter cream. Yup...that's it. I use the lemon curd you find near the jam in the grocery store. You could, of course, make your own and then determine how strong you want the lemon taste to be in your filling.

I started out by covering the tiers in fondant. The bottom tier is covered in light blue colored homemade vanilla marshmallow fondant. The top tier is covered in Duff's brand of red fondant. For any really dark color I choose Duff's because it tastes good and the color is a really true color without a chemical dye taste. On this cake the red, black and green are all Duff's fondant and the rest of it is my homemade fondant.

Then I started on the bottom tier. Now I will tell you that this cake took me about 5 hours to finish. There is just that much detail to it. I used round and oval cutters to create the clubhouse as well as the trees and clouds. The trees and clouds started out as ovals that I used a tapered fondant tool to dent the sides and then I stretched the shape to make the tree and cloud shapes. 

The hand was not so easy. I had to hand cut that one out with an exacto knife. It took me forever. Seriously. I had to trace it out on the rolled out piece of fondant and then cut it out and then, using a ball tool as well as a tapered tool, I smoothed out the edges. Yes, it was a pain but I'm really happy with how it turned out so it was worth the extra time and effort. It was then time to stack the top tier onto the bottom tier. 

The top tier included the stars on wooden skewers. Yes, those were done a few days ahead of time. I cut out double the amount of stars needed for the name letters as well as extras for the top tier and then, using water as glue, pressed the two  stars together around the skewer. I waited till they were totally dry and then piped on the black Disney Font lettering. 

Here's a trick behind the lettering. Yes, you can use Google and find the Disney Font. But the best version of that for this is actually the "stitched" font. You can see how the letters actually go together better and it makes it easier to pipe. 

I piped the yellow lettering onto the top tier and then added the stars, which I made at the same time as the ones I put on the skewers and allowed to dry, to the red fondant. For me this wasn't an easy thing since the stars didn't want to stick easily. I ended up holding them pressed onto the red fondant for a minute each to make them adhere. Yes, my patience was wearing thin by this point! LOL! Next up was rolling all of those little balls of yellow fondant for the upper tier trim. When those were all rolled I ran a bead of the yellow butter cream around the tier and placed the marbles all around. 

Last touches were to stick in the skewers and place Mickey in his place of honor...after sticking the long center skewer from the top tier to the bottom tier and into the cake drum on the base. Then I used butter cream to stick Mickey into his spot and the cake was done!

Needless to say my grandson was simply thrilled when he saw the cake! Check out the Cherry Party Blog tomorrow to see the entire Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Party Plan!

Cat