The first thing I always do when designing a birthday cake is to look at lots of ideas and then put together my favorite parts and sketch out my design. Then I make a plan….for this Care Bears cake I needed a way to support the fondant rainbows, so I asked my husband to cut and bend 2 pieces of sheet metal for the supports. I made 6 small batches of marshmallow fondant and colored them each a different color to create the rainbow slides. The rainbow on top of the cake was formed on parchment paper with 2 bamboo skewers in it to support it.
All the fondant work was done about a week ahead of time to give it plenty of time to dry. The sheet metal was wrapped in plastic wrap so no metal touched the cake or the fondant. The sunshine, number 5, and the name were all done ahead of time in yellow candy melts. I used a form for the number and letters, but the sunshine was done using the chocolate-transfer method. I put a skewer in the back of the sun to easily stand it behind the rainbow.
I cut tiny yellow stars and tiny purple and pink flowers out of the left over fondant to use when I frosted the cake.
I knew I wanted this cake on several levels, so I created levels by making two cakes of 9″ and 6″ layers. One cake was put on a cake stand; the other was placed on the table. It looked OK, but not fantastic. Then I got the idea of draping the cake display area with pink satin before I sat the cakes in their spots. Violá! It dramatically changed the appearance of the cake, making all the focus on the cake itself, rather than what you could see behind and through the cake stand.
I made the cake (one chocolate and one white) a few days ahead of time and froze them. The day before the party, I got busy with the frosting. Both cakes were frosted in sky blue, with lots of white frosting clouds made with a medium round tip. I sprinkled a few of the tiny fondant stars and flowers around the clouds.
Next came the Care Bears. I bought them off Ebay. I set them around in the clouds and sliding down the rainbow slides. It was a very happy cake! But it was missing something…..so I quickly made a batch of no-spread sugar cookies and cut them out in a small star shape. While they cooled I made a batch of bright yellow color flow icing; frosted each star yellow following the color flow directions; and then set them in front of a fan to dry overnight. By morning they were ready to go.
Tall skinny candles completed the look.
We had to transport this cake to the birthday venue, but setup was easy because I had every thing planned down to the last detail.
My granddaughter told me this was the best birthday cake in the whole wide world! She absolutely loved it, and so did a lot of the other kids and their mothers. This cake was easy because there was no intricate piping, but it looked impressive because of the satin drape, the bright stars, and the fun the Care Bears were having on their rainbow slides and in the clouds.
This is so gorgeous <3
This is so gorgeous <3