Mickey Mouse Fondant Cake

Whenever you start a new hobby or activity, there are certain long-term goals that you consciously or unconsciously set for yourself. When I started working with cakes, I knew that at some point I wanted to learn how to work with fondant. It was certainly not an immediate goal, but one I knew I would come to eventually.

When a former co-worker and current mommy-friend contacted me about making a Mickey Mouse cake for her son, my Pinterest research revealed a whole bunch of impressive, beautiful cakes... all covered in fondant. The ones decorated with just buttercream frosting looked decent, but I knew deep down that if I was going to make this cake, it would have to be with fondant. I gave myself one week to experiment and learn the basics of working with fondant.

First, I made a little 6" cake and practiced with covering it in fondant.

I was very pleased with how this first attempt turned out - it was a little uneven around the bottom, but the top and sides didn't look too bad at all. Several practice cakes later, and I was ready to get started on the Mickey Mouse cake.

Above you can see the bottom 9" round red tier and the top 6" semicircle black tier. One of the biggest issues I had with this cake was the rippling/bulging on the sides of the round tiers. You can clearly see the different layers inside the red tier. Was the fondant so heavy on top that it was squeezing the icing out from between the layers? Were there gaps between the layers that the fondant settled into? Still not sure. More research is in order.

Once all three tiers were made, I used wooden skewers to stack them and keep them in place (since making this cake, I've learned that there are even better materials to use for stabilizing and supporting cake layers which work much better than wooden skewers - thick milkshake straws! A very experienced, very sweet cake maker shared this tip with me just hours after I finished assembling the cake tiers. I'm looking forward to trying out this method on my next multi-tier cake). See how sketchy the bottoms of the tiers look at the moment? I wanted to find some way to hide those rough bottom edges.

The experienced cake maker I mentioned earlier also gave me some great advice on molding fondant (like for the Mickey ears): mix some tylose powder into your fondant to make it a bit more firm and sturdy. These Mickey ears would never have stayed upright if I had made them using the same fondant that is covering the cake. Tylose powder saved the day!

To hide the rough bottom edges, I rolled out some thin ropes of fondant and made a little border around the bottom of each tier. They weren't completely even, but after about 18 attempts, I decided that it was as good as it was going to get. I also cut out some white fondant buttons and made a red fondant bow (again, with the tylose powder).

Finally, the big white fondant "4" completes this birthday cake for a very sweet little 4 year old. I can't tell you how much fun I had making this cake and beginning the process of working with fondant! What sort of cake should I try next? :)