Strawberry Shortcake Birthday cake

Strawberry Shortcake

   

       Last month my  daughter turned 7, time flies :)  and she demanded a Strawberry Shortcake themed Birthday this year. After lots of research and analysis I finally started planning - cake , cupcakes in ice cream cones, fruit platter with all the strawberry shortcake colours, crafts, games.

And of course, a berrilicious lunch for the kidz.

 

     For the Birthday cake, I baked three 9 inch cakes, so I could make some height for my cake and  decorate the entire cake with Marshmallow Fondant (MMF)- something I never tried before. Fingers crossed ;)

     This time I used even baking strips that I made out myself, for baking the cakes, and it was great since I got almost flat topped cakes. Will surely post the tutorial. so I was able to get a 9 inch cake that was 2 inches in height. I needed a good height for the cake so that I get enough space to show the vines at the sides of cake.

     


             So decided to make some big white flowers and strawberries ahead of time and left them to air dry. All with MMF. I had tried earlier using Gum Paste, but was a little skeptical about using MMF for making my cake toppers. Used cornstarch on the work table, before making the strawberries and flowers, and allowed them to air dry for sometime and then kept them in a box.

The leaves and tiny flowers did not need any form, and also since I ran out of time just got them ready while I was decorating the cake. But I again used cornstarch as a base on the work table to make them. Cornstarch helps to dry the items a little when you are working.

I have  posted a tutorial about the fondant flower tutorial and fondant strawberry tutorial  that will guide you for this project.

       



        Frosted the cake with orange, plum and strawberry flavoured frosting from Duncan Hines Frostings Creations, so that I get all the colours I wanted in the cake. Then was the tricky part - rolling a big fondant layer and attaching to cake. Well, I first did some math - get the height of the cake, measure it on the fondant and cut it in big strips and then attached it to the sides of the cake. I had to put three such big strips, to cover the strips used the small pink strips of fondant and then the stems and leaves. I don't have a stencil for alphabets (should think of getting one now), so just cut them with a knife and slowly rubbed the edges with fingers to smooth out and attached all the accents to the cake by brushing some water to them. MMF is Kool! . No glue. Just water to attach.  Job done!

     

        The cake finally looked the way I had sketched it, but I guess it would look good if there was another tier of cake for base. Now making a tier cake will be next challenge since I have never tried one. The cake tasted delecious with three different frosting flavors!