Layla' s Birthday Cake

I know it's a bit later then it should be but I do want to share about Layla’s birthday cake. ​

If I do say so myself it turned out amazing. Check the picture if you don't believe me :).

I decided a few things:

1. It would be super colorful

2. It would have to be 3 tired

3. It would have to be Finding Nemo (we have the figurines)

4. It would have to be trolls (she loves trolls and we bought expensive figures).

The night before we showed her the little toys and she LOVED THEM!! Layla spent about 20 minutes talking and examining each toy I was soo excited about that. I was really happy that she approved of the theme for her birthday and her cake...

That night we made 3 double batches of vanilla cake. In a way it was too much cake but a few pieces broke so I was happy to have extra. I also decided to multi-color and alternate the layers. The theory was that each tier would have 2 big layers. Eric was there to help as always, he got to work lining baking pans with parchment paper and helping me figure out complimentary but funky color combination and to be frustrated when I didn't have enough batter to fill the next layer.

The bottom tier would be 12 inch, green and purple. The middle tier was 8 inch cake in this picture I was already in the process of splitting the layers. The middle tier was blue and orange. The top tier was a bit tricky to do since I wanted a more drastic size different between the tiers I needed to use an alternate type of baking dish to get a small 4 inch tier. The colors on top were pink and yellow. Small problem with the top tier was that they were not baked in the technically correct pan, when I came to split the tiers they broke a bit :(. Oh well I still made it work.

Since I had a Nemo theme of course I needed to make gelatin bubbles. I had seen these done before and I decided to google to refresh my memory. I used the video Inside Out Cake with Edible Gelatin Bubbles from Cookies Cupcakes and Cardio among a few other and followed the technique, I had blown up about 6 water balloons with air in a variety of sizes and I was super excited. I got the gelatin ready and started dipping,….

Problem was I forgot to grease the balloons before dipping them so I only managed to save 2/6 gelatin balls, the effect was still there and I learned something so that’s good I guess.

The tiers:

3 tiers 3 techniques was what I decided the goal of the cake should be because that’s just good marketing sense to show a variety of product skills.

Tier one Bottom tier:

Theme: Finding Nemo

Technique: Mirror glaze

Since it was under water id decided to do the mirror glaze, again I studied the strategies of Cupcakes and cardio and Rosanna Pansino and a few others to get the technique down.

Challenge #1 timing everything out, this was not too difficult because I was doing about 8000 things at the same time so wait time was easy to achieve without too much actual waiting.

Challenge #2: its supper messy, make sure you have a really big container under to catch all the drippings or if you are like me you will have to clean not only a baking sheet but also the counter and the floor.

Challenge #3: getting the beautiful multi-color effect. Do not over blend, when you see multiple colors STOP!! Mine became mostly 1 shade of blue with a tiny bit of marbling. But it worked for the cake.

Challenge #3.5: the mixture cools fairly quickly so don’t be a Tanya and remember to put it back in the microwave for 30 seconds so that it is easy to use.

Challenge #4: the mirror glaze stays sticky so that means as soon as you put something down on the cake you must be happy with its position because if you try to move it the glaze will stick to the object and want to tear off of the beautifully smooth cake (so I left everything)

Challenge #4.5 since it is sticky I would not recommend it as a bottom tier for a cake, when you remove the other tiers the glaze will stick to the cardboard and leave you with an unappetizing cake

Tier 2 (middle tier)

Theme: Trolls

Technique: rainbow icing and colorful chocolate ganache drips

I wasn’t too sure on what to do for the poppy tiers if I should cover in fondant and make fondant flowers, cover in butter cream and make fondant flower and so on. I spent some time googling ideas for troll’s cakes when I came across this: BAKING RECIPES S1 • E90 TROLLS RAINBOW DRIP CAKE RECIPE and was inspired to copy the technique

I changed the colors and made them my own shades, I also decided to use 2 colors of ganache for added depth.

Honestly I had no challenges and regrets about this tier it was my favorite and easiest to make.

Tier 3 (top)

Theme: trolls continued

Technique: Marshmallow fondant

I have never been the best at covering a cake with fondant but at the end of the day it was not a terrible job. The bottom was not as smooth as I would like and the pink marbling effect I tried to achieve got blended out because I over worked the fondant, but it still made for a simple and cute top tier for poppy to be the star on.

Assembling and decorating;

I found a large silver tray to place my cake on put the bottom tier, put my straws through, decorated and snapped a picture. I tried to remove decorations to accurately place the middle tier but they got stuck so I had to work around them. Then the top tier, stand back and notice a few boo-boos so I decided to pipe a cute border around the top and middle tier, looks perfect. Place remaining toys decorations and painted “Layla” my amazing father-in-law made for me and I was set!

Everyone including myself loved the cake and it tasted amazing!! So I hope you enjoyed the different techniques and learned a little something about the challenges of fancy cake decorating.

I also wanted to say thank you to the amazingly talent people who post easy to follow tutorial on YouTube, you guys honestly saved me a few times!! Maybe one day I will be a vlogger but for now I will stick to writing.

XOXO

Tanya from Tancakes

#Trolls #Birthday #Findingnemo #Cake #baking #business #RosannaPansino #Cupcakesandcardio #myvirginkitchen