girl birthday cake

Here it is! All done! The birthday girl picked the pink color scheme. I love how it turned out. You can only see it a little in the picture, but the whole cake was metallic and sparkly! Perfect for any 8 year old girl.



I had some difficulties while making this cake. I wanted to make a Topsy Turvy cake. But since my cake is so moist it wasn't keeping its form well and I actually had a layer completely smash and crumble under its own weight. If I do anymore funky shaped cakes like this. I think I will have to do pound cake so it will keep its structural integrity.
Another trick I tried that worked super great. The cake was very wobbly because of its funky shape. So besides the normal supports under each tier. I cut a dowel the height of the entire cake. My husband sharpened the end for me. And I used a hammer and gently hammered it down the center of the cake through the cardboard under each tier. So it ran from top to bottom. This made it transport like a dream! There was no way I could have done it without that.



All the golds are actually hand painted. I take metallic luster dust and mix it with lemon extract to make paint. I use lemon extract because its 83% alcohol and it evaporates leaving only the color. If you tried to use just water it would end up in a gross drippy mess on the fondant. If you want something tasteless, vodka would work great. But I wasn't daring enough to head to a liquor store. Also, I think putting vodka on a little girls birthday cake just sounds bad!