I was a bit scared when she told me what she wanted! She sent me this picture:
Obviously what she got was a bit different but the color was definitely inspired by this cake! I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to get those huge wings and unicorn body to stay upright and stable. I have never sculpted anything this complicated before! But I digress. Can we talk about the color scheme some more?
I was quite worried I wouldn't be able to find the requested purple sprinkles and I was almost right! Going to the local craft stores and the neighborhood grocery markets were dead ends although I did find the pearl dragees and purple confetti shaped sprinkles I ultimately used to create what you see above. I thought I would end up using just color mix sprinkles but then two days before the cake was due I stumbled upon a hidden gem just 5 minutes away from my job! A cake supply store! Yay!
I also bought these from the same supplier but I cold have bought them at Wal-Mart or Joanns. I sued these to cover up where the cake meets cake board. They are giant six-lets! So cute!
I just used a little buttercream to adhere them to the cake/cake board! I really wanted to make a fondant covered board but I ended up just using a cake board covered in tin foil.
Covering an entire 8-in cake in sprinkles was a lot easier than I expected. And messy! I followed the tutorial from The Cake Blog: DIY : RAINBOW SPRINKLE CAKE
I was worried about covering my top tier in fondant but after watching several YouTube videos on the process I'm happy to report that I was able to make my own marshmallow fondant and apply the fondant with no mishaps!
Here are the completed tiers. I really hate that huge gap between the cakes. I don't think my tiers were quite level and I'm sure that the sprinkles did not help the situation! I just smeared some of the butter cream icing that was colored to match the fondant in that crack and the space disappeared!
I used modeling chocolate to sculpt the alicorn. I think next time I'd use fondant mixed with some tylose powder because apparently my hands get really hot enough to melt the chocolate and make it greasy even wearing those little food handling gloves! This also took me several days to complete and the modeling chocolate got dry and brittle.
The wings were a pain in the butt! I drew out a template and then cut out four of the wing shapes and sandwiched a skewer in between using sugar glue to hold it all together.
I accidentally made two of the same direction wings. I was pretty ticked off at myself and thought I'd have to remake one of my wings but as you can see in the finished product it didn't mater and I think worked out better. From the back it doesn't look that pretty but it doesn't look horrible either.
My alicorn was almost too large for the 6-in top tier! I had drawn a circle using the cake pan and used that as a guide for length so I'm not sure how this thing got so large and out of hand! There was also a lot of gap between the base of the sculpture and the cake. Thank god I had a ton of butter cream icing left! I had planned on having it seated in a grassy meadow any ways so I used a lead tip and piped in some grass.
So there you have it! My first fondant covered, sprinkle covered two tiered cake! It was a lot of work but also a lot of fun! I really hope I can make some more cakes like this in the future. My husband is begging me for a penguin cake so maybe that is what I'll work on next. I'd love to learn how to make sculpted cakes and a penguin might fit the bill!
