Bye Bye Apocalypse

My husband and I love this design, so we just had to make a cake! We started with my delicious butter cake recipe, and I flavored it with cherry and almond flavor. We made two 9" rounds, using one whole round for the cake base, and cutting the second round to become the backdrop. We had never worked with fondant before, so we decided that would be our main medium. We made it from scratch, and it turned out great. We assembled the cakes and crumb coated with a buttercream frosting, also yummy!! The fondant (white) was applied to cover the cake. We couldn't get it to cover the cake in one piece, so we cut a second piece to cover the back. Next came some of the painting. My husband outlined the main scene in light blue by using gel coloring mixed with a bit of vodka. Next, we made the pylons by molding some Tootsie Rolls. As an afterthought this was a really bad idea as the heat and humidity started to get to them and they easily lost shape. Next time we'll use gum paste. We then began what became a really long and horrible road to making the boy and girl. I cannot even begin to tell you how hard it was. The first attempt was with fondant. That worked out great until the had to be handled. They then broke all to pieces because they were thin. Our next attempt was with a French cookie called a Tuille. They turned out like little floppy pancakes...hmm not so much! Our final attempt was to layer a couple of white chocolate pieces together for stability then covered them in fondant. This was finally what made them work....sort of. To make them stable on the ever melting Tootsie Roll pylons we had to stake them with a toothpick from behind which was glued with white chocolate. From there we cut the balloons, placed them and stuck them onto the cake by wetting the back. We then painted the black detail work using gel color and vodka. Then came the final detail work which was royal blue gel color and vodka. The final piece of work was to cover the back. We cut a piece of fondant, wet it and stuck it to the back... a little ugly...but it was our first attempt with fondant. There are a quite a few things that we would do different and better next time! I hope you all enjoy this as much as we did! Overall the cake took about 3.5 hours with baking, planning, and those darn little people! The cake was amazingly delicious! We used a Washington Cherry pastry emulsion to flavor the cake. The fondant like eating a chewy, sugary tire! ;0)