Fabregé Egg Birthday Cake

This cake was for my own birthday. I love making my own birthday cake because I can try out new things, and really play around with my own birthday cake. This year I decided I wanted something Spring-y, maybe a bit Easter-y without being too cheesy or typical. I finally hit upon an idea. Fabregé eggs. So, I decided to make myself a Fabregé egg birthday cake.

Now, what kind of cake should I make that would be Spring-y? I finally decided on carrot cake and cream cheese frosting.

But I don't have an egg form and I didn't want it to be laying down anyway, so I decided to make it standing. That's more Fabregé anyway. So, I baked a total of six layers of cake. I used two different recipes of carrot cake because I wasn't completely happy with the first one. Each recipe was baked in one seven-inch round pan and two four-inch round pans. I didn't use one four-inch round, but I used all the rest of the cake to make the egg.

 I started out by stacking my cake with a four-inch layer and then a seven-inch layer with cream cheese frosting between.

 At this point I placed some dowels in my cake

 and placed a cake board on top. The cake board is a circle of cardboard cut out and covered in tin foil.

 Then I finished stacking the cake with a seven-inch layer, a four-inch layer and another four-inch layer.

Then I started carving the top of the cake into an egg shape.

 Finally, I carved the bottom layers to complete the egg shape.

 I thought it looked great.

 Then I crumb coated my cake in cream cheese frosting. Because I add so much powdered sugar to my cream cheese frosting, it's actually fondant stable.

 While the cake was chilling, I mixed my red color. I began with a base of red fondant and added a bit of black and a touch of pink to make a deeper almost burgundy color. I will admit it's more red than burgundy, but I still loved it.

 Then I frosted my egg cake again with cream cheese frosting.

 Then I covered the top of the cake with red fondant. It was giving me some trouble with tearing and too many folds as I moved toward the bottom, so I decided to give it a seam in the middle. Fabregé eggs typically had an opening anyway.

Then I wrapped a piece of red fondant around the bottom of the egg.

 I trimmed it and smoothed it as best I could. I noticed that my egg was leaning to one side, so I did my best to correct that, but it was still kind of tilty.

Then I used some yellow-orange colored fondant to make some lines using my clay extruder. I made one thick one and several thinner ones. I wrapped the thickest line around the center to cover the seam. Then I made several more horizontal lines and used the lines to form the Roman numerals XXXVII, which is the age I'm turning... 37.

 Then I used two different sizes of flower cutters to make some small flowers. And I used my flourish fondant press mold to make the fleur de lis on the top. I thought it made it look like a crown.

 The back needed to be addressed, though. To hide the worse seam, I used a thick tube of fondant meant to look like the egg was resting on a base. I made a second one as well to complete the illusion of a base. However, this is clearly the back of the egg.

 Then I painted all the yellow-orange fondant with gold luster dust mixed with alcohol.

 Finally, I placed gold sugar pearls onto all of my little flowers and between the fleur de lis.

 I really love it! I think it's really true to the Fabregé style, even though we weren't copying any specific one.

 The fleur de lis on the top really look like a crown, as well.

 Happy Birthday to me!

To watch us make this cake on YouTube, click here: https://youtu.be/-bXLPa20uH0
Um zuzuschauen, wie wir diese Torte auf YouTube machen, hier klicken: https://youtu.be/2a2RmBYCwQI