Katie's Kickers: 4 Tiered Fondant Cake: 18th Bday!

First of all... Happy 18th birthday to my sweet sister Kallie, and happy 13th birthday to my cute brother Brody! They had a pretty awesome day yesterday, as they do every July 6th together. Cute little birthday buddies!

So anyways, as you all know.. I've been trying new and different things with CAKE. So when I seen a cake from The Shaky Baker, I just HAD to make it in orange for my sister. She's been in choir for 7 years, and she's played the piano for even longer. I knew the music symbols and the piano design were perfect for her!

So I started out with my favorite cake recipe from scratch, and made 8 cake batters... Yes.. You read correctly.. EIGHT. I had no idea baking big cakes was going to be soooo much cake! But it was worth it!

My first bottom layer came out looking like this...

I almost cried.. But then I let my other 3 layers sit in the pan to cool for a little longer before I popped them out, and they looked just fine. But on the next set of 4 layers, I was sure to put more Cake Release in my pans.. Just in case ;)

I made 4 batches of fondant for this mega cake too. I used a new recipe.. and it was FABULOUS! I found it from Veena's Art of Cakes. My best discovery yet with fondant making. The two white ones I made were perfect. But when I made the two orange ones, and the one black, they were a bit sticky while I was forming them in a ball to sit over night in the fridge. I had a little trouble rolling them out though. I'm not sure exactly what I was doing wrong.. they might have been too dry. But I got cracks and tears in my fondant once I put it on the cake.

I know it was my first time though, so I was a little forgiving. Practice makes perfect, right? So I'm going to keep practicing, and hopefully I'll be able to figure out where I went wrong.

I made little goat poops for the pearls around the cake.. lol we have a baby goat.. So when I started rolling the black fondant in little balls.. OBVIOUSLY someone was going to make that connection.