Belated Unicorn Birthday Cake

August 12, 2018

This unicorn birthday cake was long overdue. It was for one of my husband's cousins, and I had agreed to do it months ago. But the family had so much going on, they couldn't plan a birthday party until the summer. So I finally was able to make good on a promise to make her birthday cake.

I started out getting the ears and horn ready because they needed to dry. I mixed gum paste with fondant to make a 50/50 mixture. Then I rolled it out and freehand cut out some triangular shapes and trimmed off the sides to make this shape. Then I did it again in miniature and placed one on top of the other. Then I laid them face down on my fondant rolling pin to dry. When they were dry, I painted them with gold luster dust mixed with clear alcohol.

The horn was a bit of a challenge. I actually made two. The first one, I rolled into a long tapered rope and wrapped it around a wooden skewer starting at the tip.

And this technique made the horn quite unstable. I thought it would stick to the skewer but it really didn't.

When that one fell apart, I started over. This time, I rolled the 50/50 into a long tapered rope again, but this time, I started with the fat end and rolled the 50/50 into coils around itself, so the horn was one large piece of 50/50.

Then I inserted the blunt end of the skewer into the 50/50 about halfway up and trimmed off excess wood, so it wouldn't be too long. Then I painted it with the same luster dust/alcohol mixture as above. Then I let it dry overnight.

The cake itself was one and a half recipes of my vanilla cake dyed three colors: pink, purple and teal. The fourth was left white. They were all baked in my 8-inch layer pans and carefully leveled.

Then I stacked the cakes using the thinnest amount of American buttercream between the layers.

But the cake wasn't very even on the sides so I trimmed them to have straight sides.

Then I crumb coated the cake. I did not use more frosting than this on the cake because with this many layers, too much frosting just makes it much too sweet. Then I covered the cake in white fondant.

I used three colors of fondant for the mane: pink, purple and teal. Fortunately, they were very close matches to the colors of the cake itself.

I rolled the fondant into thick cords and wrapped them around the top of the cake, and curled them onto the back. I also used a bit of purple rolled into thin cords and formed into arches to make the eyes, with two small pieces acting as the eyelashes.

Then I placed the rest of the hair on the cake and cut one piece of hair to place one ear. The other was next to the hair. Then I inserted the horn into the middle.