Unicorn Cake

I love making cakes and that is why I love it when birthdays come around because they give me the perfect excuse to make one! I would spend hours coming up with cake concepts and ideas if I could, but unfortunately I am an A level student and that means I have to spend my time studying. :( I made this unicorn cake for my sister's 13th birthday, and I enjoyed every minute of making it (except perhaps, the part when I had to redo the unicorn head 2 million times!)

To make the cake, I started out by making the equivalent of three layers worth of cupcake Jemma's vanilla cake batter (I multiplied it by 1.5 to get enough for three 20cm sandwich layers). I then decided to dye each layer a different colour. I chose turquoise, pink and orange so that it would match the unicorn's hair. I love colour coordinating my bakes!

If I had been making a cake for a non family member, I would have leveled my cakes and cut off the layer of caramelisation, because the inside of the cake can look a bit messy (like mine does!). I then layered each cake with my favourite buttercream recipe (also from Cupcake Jemma) which I made extra special by adding in the seeds of a whole vanilla bean. When icing cakes, make sure to crumb coat and chill. It is the most important part of cake decorating. This involves icing the whole cake with a small amount of buttercream and then leaving it in the fridge to chill for about 20 minutes or until the buttercream feels hard to the touch. This ensures that none of the cake crumbs get into the beautiful white buttercream. After completely icing my cake, I took my palette knife and made a slight impression in the cake whilst I span my lazy Susan. I then finished it off with gold stars and sprinkles.

I made my unicorn a couple of days in advance, so that it would be completely dry. This took me about 4 - 5 hours to complete. To make this cake topper I used: white fondant, food gel colouring (to make different hair colours), basic modeling tools and some gold luster dust which I mixed with lemon juice to make gold paint (for the hooves and horn). Like all fondant figurines, it requires a lot of skill and patience to make one of these. The hair is the most tedious part by far, as you have to shape and curl each individual strand of hair free hand. Not an easy task. I could definitely improve this as it is not exactly proportionate and it has some imperfections which can be hard to avoid because white fondant is very unforgiving. To bring out even more of the colour, I decided to use my left over dyed fondant and turn it into a marble effect platform for the unicorn to sit on. I achieved this by mixing all the colours together, rolling it out flat and using a circle cutter to make the disc. I glued the unicorn to the platform using water and then I stuck the whole thing on my cake with buttercream.