Her favorite flavor is plain old fashioned yellow cake with vanilla buttercream filling. The covering is all marshmallow fondant. I started out by "paneling" the blue onto the cake tiers. This is because the fondant can become overwhelming if you cover the cake then cover it again with the white topper. I made the panels actually taller than the cake so I could fold it over and make a "berm" for the snow and give the edges a bit more of a rolly snow hills feel to them. Then I rolled out the white into circles that were about one and a half inches bigger than the top of the tier. Then I used a rolling cutter to make the edges more scalloped edged. Once I applied the circle to the top of the tier I gently pulled on the edges so they would be wavy but uneven. I added the trim to the bottom of the cake and then let it set up for about an hour while I worked on the "trees" and snowflakes.
The trees are just sugar cones that have been covered with royal icing. I used a large tip and semi loose royal icing. I placed the cones upside down on some parchment paper and then, starting at the bottom, I piped up and down in a zig zag manner all way around the bottom of the cone, about one inch at a time. This made the overlapping layers of "snow" for the trees. I let those dry for about an hour until I was ready to stack the cakes.
I punched out the letters using letter cookie cutters and then dusted them with silver and blue mixed luster dust. Finally I piped a bit of royal icing on the tip of each one and sprinkled that with light blue and white sanding sugar. While they were drying I luster dusted the white toppers with silver luster dust to give them a bit of shimmer against the flat blue.
The snowflakes were even easier. I found a new punch set that I'm simply in LOVE with! For $10 I got three sizes of punches. I stacked the cakes and then added the royal icing trees to the sides of the cake where my panels met and the punched out letters. Then I was able to just punch out the snowflake, pick up the punch where the snowflake was still sitting, brush on a bit of water and then gently press it to the cake while depressing the plunger...VOILA! Snowflakes on cake! This was happy innovation for me since placing snowflakes is really hard. They want to stretch out of shape when you pick them up. The punches made my life SOOOO much easier! I dusted those with some luster dust so they could shimmer too!
Once They were on the cake I was ready to place the trees and characters. The Birthday Girl already had the figures so they were washed well and dried before using royal icing to add them to the cake. I piped a bunch of royal icing onto the bottom of each one so when I pressed them down the "snow" squished out around the bottom of the figure. I piped a mound of royal icing in front of the cake and gently pressed the "5" down into it like it was a snow hill and then cut a snowflake in half to stick on each side.
The final touches were adding the large grain white sugar to the edges and the blue snowflakes to the cake. The blue snowflakes had added tylose to make them harden up faster and pure blue luster dust on them so they would stand out against the trees.
The Birthday Girl was amazed! But that wasn't all I did for the dessert table! I also used blue and white Candy Melts to make dessert treats like these "ice shards" which were made from the left over blue and white melted pieces and layered in a brownie pan, sprinkled with sanding sugar, set up in the freezer and then broken up into "shards" before being packaged.
Such a fun day and a wonderful way to make my granddaughter very happy and her day a bit more special!
Cat
