So a co-worker of mine asked me to make this cake for her daughter's 11th birthday. I was super excited yet nervous because it was in fact going to be my first zebra print cake. Thankfully though my co-workers daughter printed out some pics of several she liked and I choose her most favorite cake as the one to conquer. With every cake I bake the first thing I must do is of course make the fondant. Which, as I've stated before is a very messy task, at least for me it is. I make a marshmellow fondant which is just basically just a bag of melted marshmellows, a little water, and a lot of confectious sugar.
The cake was a simple white one with buttercream icing. For the bottom tier I used an 8 inch round and for the top tier I used 6 inch rounds. After baking the bottom tier I covered it with white fondant. I then colored some fondant black for the zebra print. I originally bought a zebra stencil hoping I could just outline the print but that ended up not working out because my tools were too big to fit inside the stencil. In the end, I ended up free handing the print and it turned out better than I thought it would.
I decided to cover the base with black fondant and placed the bottom tier on top of it. I planned on covering the circumference of the base with some zebra print ribbon I had found.
After completing the bottom tier, I turned my attention to the bow. Now I had attempted making a bow before on a couple of cakes but this bow was going to be different. The bow was to be sort of a neon green color. I used only gum paste from the bow since it dries faster. To make the bow I cut four strips of gum paste in the shape of a rectangle. The dimensions of the strips were 2 1/2 inches by 6 inches. I used to of the strips to make the loops. To hold their shape, I rolled some napkins in the shape of a tube and placed them inside the loops.
To make the "legs" of the bow, I took the remaining to strips and cut triangles out of the bottoms and placed strips inside of a plastic bag to prevent them from drying out.
After I finished the bow, I turned my attention to the top tier which I covered in hot pink fondant and decorated it with black dots.
The last thing I had to worry about was the "B" that was to be place on a rhombus shaped shield. I decided to free hand the "B" in white fondant as opposed to using my letter molds. In the end, this had to be one of my favorite cakes to make.