Peace, Love, and Birthday Cake

This was one I was VERY excited to do. As soon as I was asked to make it, all these ideas flooded. After acting like a kid in a psychedelic candy shop I regained my thoughts and came up with this cake.

 I started off by dying cake batter in 4 different colors equally. Pretty simple and straight forward

After greasing the petal shaped pan (an even cooler detail) I poured the batter in one by one on top of one another. I didn't swirl anything or try to mix it up. It went into the oven just like this. I did this for both layers and put buttercream between the two. When the cake was done I let it cool overnight and covered it with plastic wrap.

 While the cake was cooling I began on the details. I used a simple circle cutter to make what would later become peace signs and smiley faces. The circles and letters were made with a fondant/gumpaste mix to give them a bit more stiffness.

The flowers were cut with a daisy gumpaste cutter. As you can see, I used bathroom cups to allow them to dry. I turned them upside downand cut a hole into them to give the flowers some dimension. Everything dried overnight along with the cake. I left the fan on in the room to speed up the process a bit.

Once the cakes were cooled the next day I covered them in "tie-dyed" fondant. Ok, the fondant wasn't really tie-dyed. I took 4 colors that were the client's choice and rolled them together. The trick here is NOT to roll it too much. I tried it first and found out it turns into a brown blob. A couple twists of all 4 colors together, roll it into a ball and flatten it out. You have to do it right the first time otherwise the colors get too mixed and you get the infamous brown blob.

Once the cake was covered in it's "groovy" fare it was time to add the details. I put a few cutout circles on floral wire to allow some faces and peace signs to stand up in the cake. The rest would be glued on around the cake using royal icing.

This was probably the one thing that gave me the hardest time, the big peace sign. After 3-4 tries it came out the way I wanted. I had to use 2 different sized circle cutouts  to get the size right to fit the rest of the sign inside it. I used water to attach the letters and daisy to the sign.

 I was very pleased with how this came out. It was exactly what I planned on it looking like. The only thing I didn't have was a picture of the tie-dyed cake itself. I think all that really matters is that it was exactly what was expected and the cake tasted GROOOOVY! :o)