Amazing 'It's A Small World' Themed Cake

I was asked to bake and design a birthday cake which was big enough to feed 150 people AND themed ‘It’s A Small World’. It was for my great niece’s 1st birthday party on Sunday afternoon in San Francisco.

I started with the fondant decor that was going to cover the cake. A week before my trip to San Francisco, I made the cake board and then I started on the marshmallow fondant decor that was going to cover the cake.

I made a stencil of the ‘It’s A Small World’ ride with card stock and drew the design on the fondant, colored in the geometric patterns with colored fondant, printed ‘children of the world’ images on icing sheets and then put those onto fondant as well. I made the front of the boat and secured the decor onto heavy stock cardboard, wrapped it in bubble wrap, placed in a FedEx box and packed that in my suitcase along with 5 round cake pans ranging in sizes 6″ to 10″ along with my cake art supplies, brushes and silicone molds and a bag of powdered sugar. At the security

At the security checkpoint at the airport, I was stopped and “randomly” chosen to search my bag as suspicious white powder covered my bag. I told them it was powered sugar and that I wasn’t trying to smuggle cocaine on the plane. After they checked my bag, they saw that it was indeed powdered sugar and let me get on the plane. Next time I will check my bags!

I got to San Francisco on Friday night around 10pm, went to my brother’s kitchen and made the ganache for a 5 tier cake, then went to bed. I Woke up at 7:30 AM on Saturday and baked 5 cakes. Three cakes were Mango Cake with Mango Buttercream and white chocolate ganache, used yellow cake mix. I followed directions on the package but added chopped mangos, mango flavoring and mango essence in the cake and buttercream.

The other 2 cakes were Banana Chocolate Caramel with Banana buttercream. I added 16 very ripe banana’s to the cake and buttercream.

After all 5 cakes were chilled in the fridge for about an hour or so, I began to slice and sort the layers of cake and buttercream, put those back in the fridge, then ‘ganached’ all the cakes with white chocolate and milk chocolate, then put those back in the fridge. Then I started to make the marshmallow fondant and dye them different variations of blue.

I covered all 5 tiers by 4AM! Next, I dowelled and stacked the tiers on the cake board using bamboo skeweres. Then I started to put the premade decor I did last week onto the cake…

After 27 hours of straight work and no breaks later… this was the finsihed product.

Related cakes: