Birthday Cake Blast

So, I'm going to stray from my typical posts today and archive my first-time experience with fondant. I was inspired (crazed, maybe) by a Pinterest post about making a cake that people could write on. I know, right??! So cool!

Annie's 9th birthday party was "Tie Dye" themed, and she is a self-proclaimed artist, so a graffiti art cake seemed the perfect fit. We experimented the previous weekend with a traditional yellow cake recipe from my tried and true Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. We made the batter, separated it into four bowls and then colored each with food coloring. Then we carefully spooned the batter into a cake pan (we did not swirl or stir or blend or in any other way combine the colors! The baking merges them in cool ways, so there's no need). So, the inside of the cake was "tie-dye." All we had to do now was cover the outside with fondant and order food-safe markers (thank goodness for Amazon Prime!).

Here's the kiddos helping with the batter:

Henry is timing the mixing time between egg additions (60 seconds takes a long time!). Plus, since we planned for ten girls, we made two sheet cakes to have plenty of "writing room" for all of them, so that's a lot of eggs!

I should have taken a picture of the cake before we iced it, but I forgot. Oh well. But, thank goodness my mother was there to help. After hubby took the kids to soccer practice, mom and I started the fondant step. She was smart enough to read the directions. This was good because apparently, you can't just cover a cake with fondant. I don't know why. First, you have to cover the cake with buttercream. Really?? I thought the whole idea was to avoid making frosting, but okay . . .

Here's mom covering the cake with the buttercream:

Ok, so the fun part was doing the fondant! It wasn't hard at all! I didn't have any of the appropriate tools, but I did have a rolling pin, so I kneaded and rolled (Apparently, you use powdered sugar instead of flour so it doesn't stick. So smart!). Lesson #1: roll your fondant thinner than I did. The layer was way too thick. The instructions indicated the fondant should be 1/8" thick, so that's what I was aiming for, but I wasn't very successful apparently.

However, I got the effect I wanted, which was a blank canvas for writing:

We all took turns writing notes to Annie, so the girls would know what to do:

Henry's was my favorite:

My camera died during the party, so I am waiting for mom and Eric to send me theirs. Until then, this is all I have. Thanks for reading. 

Tomorrow I will showcase a stamp set (still to be decided!). Check back for more details . . .