My First Topsy Turvy

Well technically this is my 2nd topsy turvy cake if we count the quickly failed first attempt. But I did learn something from that first one, you cannot carve a super moist into a topsy turvy cake! This time I figured out the perfect recipe for the vanilla cake, it was easy to carve and didn't fall apart at all! The batter is really thick compared to most, which gave me the perfect density for this topsy turvy.
The chocolate cake however wasn't as great. It held together, but with more difficulty, so I'll have to continue testing new ones out next  time.

Part one, all cut up and in the freezer. This helps the icing set and keeps your cake from sliding around when you place your fondant over it. However you are going to want to make sure that your icing is smooth because little bumps will freeze solid as well getting in the way of your smooth finish.

Yay! I did it! They're both in one piece and both 5 layers of goodness :D

                      

Covering the layers in fondant 

I brushed on a layer of royal icing in between the two layers to hold them firmly in place together.

I also used royal icing to "glue" the bottom layer of the cake to the cake board which I covered in fondant using shortening.

First piece to go on was the girl, the picture makes it looks nice and simple, but she had a skewer through her body to hold in place which came out the top of her head when she was first placed into the cake. This created some hair loss and it had to be redone. I also dressed on her the cake to create the flowing dress which would have broken upon placing otherwise. Every cake has it's challenges, she was mine.

She might not be perfect, but she's my first and although her arm broke off,  twice, she's still special.

I made the birthday's girls name and age out of gumpaste. Now the first set I made was eaten by my 4 year old son, so this new set only had overnight to dry. Gotta love little nibblers! Luckily they held up anyhow!

I considered leaving it just like this, but my original sketch included flowers, so on came the flowers.

Turns out that my original sketch was right, the flowers added a nice touch. Just prior to placing them on I decided that our girl needed a flower as well to match.

And there we have it, I can officially make topsy turvy cakes and it was nice and easy, much more time consuming of course, but all I needed was the right cake recipe to make it happen.