Ombre Swiss Buttercream Mud Cake with DIY Mini Bunting

Girls cakes. I don't get much of a chance to make them and sure do enjoy it when I do. I wouldn't say that I am a frou frou girl (although my collection of makeup, shoes and bags may contradict this) but I do enjoy embracing the feminine occasionally.


So two hints I got for the interests for the birthday girl was a piano style cake board, music and purple.

I mashed together a few influences and came up with this. 

The cake board was made about 3 days prior to allow the fondant to harden. I also mixed some tylose powder in it to help it along a little. The lines of the keys were indented with a pizza cutter and the black keys also cut out with a pizza cutter. No measuring, just freestyle.





The mud cake was a tried and tested Exclusively Food recipe that I always use for chocolate or white chocolate mud cakes and it's awesome as there is a PDF that shows different quantities for different pan sizes.

I pinned a few buttercream technique images that I was interested in (see my Pinterest board for a look of all things cake that inspire me on the interwebs!), but ended up going with the bottom layer of this Cakestyle TV video on Youtube (this specific method starts from 20 mins 20 sec). If you are interested in cake making, their tutorials are great.

Everyone loves a surprise in the middle of their cake (unless it was a baked in bug . . . . ), so the bottom layer is 4 layers and the two in the middle were hollowed out with a round cutter and Maltesers hidden inside.

The frosting recipe I used was a Swiss Meringue Buttercream recipe from Sweetapolita and I coloured it with Royal Purple from Americolour.

P.S. Is anyone a control freak that writes instructions on how the cake is cut or is this just me . . . . . 

The mini bunting was a free printable that I came across from Pinterest from here. I printed it on photo paper as I had no cardstock and I attached it to two bamboo skewers with some silver christmas string. I wanted to attach it to two swirly straws but I couldn't find the colour I wanted. 


And done.

I find that my cakes are always a huge mash of inspiration from many places these days and it was a lot less stress making this from buttercream in 70% humidity and 34 degrees celcius!

Got to love humidity encouraging 'cake sweat' to form!