So on the week where Melbourne weather tried to do its best to emulate Brisbane I had plans for another extravagant cake attempt. This time 3 dozen cupcakes all sitting on a cupcake tower with a cutting cake/ centerpiece style thing at the top.
Didn’t seem like it would be much of a problem until the humidity hit and the last thing you want when dealing with fondant is heat and humidity. One of the reasons I hadn’t tried any real cake decorating until moving south.
Oh well I was sure going to learn a lot from this and charged forth regardless.

All in all excluding a midnight fondant disaster on Friday night and an emergency stop off for more fondant on Saturday I think it held together quite well. The request from the birthday girl was butterflies and dinosaurs and a garden … tall order but I had the idea to do a dinosaur in the midst of a bee and butterfly filled garden with the garden being made up by the cupcakes. The bees had to be in there as having made some for a lady at work I thought they were so cute and wanted to do a few more.
All the toppers were made from sugar paste and sat atop a mixture of vanilla or chocolate cupcakes with vanilla butter cream tinted green to match the larger cake. The pink ones were vanilla cake with a raspberry butter cream that had been flavoured (and coloured) with the addition of pureed raspberries.
The cutting cake on top was a mud cake with a layer of chocolate ganache and covered in fondant (a nightmare to try and keep from bubbling or melting in the weather.. and I hope it survived long enough for the party).
The dinosaur was hand moulded from gum paste with the main body area being formed from a mound of LCM bars (rice crispie treats) This actually worked really well and was quite durable considering – and Nic yes this was done on the fly with no instructions ( I actually surprised myself with this actually working from concept to final product).

So Happy Birthday Clare, I hope you loved your cake as much as I enjoyed making it.