Mickey Mouse Clubhouse 2

First birthday cakes are always fun, and this cake was no exception.  It gave me a chance to remake the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse design, and this time I took a slightly different approach.  Instead of trying to simulate the grass with a sheet cake covered in green buttercream, I chose to cover the cake board in green foil.  The advantages were a brighter green color (to contrast with the red and yellow colors in the cake) and it gave me more cake to use in the various structures.

  The ears of the cake and the bottom of the sphere were made of styrofoam, but everything else in the cake was edible.  I used airbrush color for the black and red, but mixed the yellow and blue colors into the fondant.  The blue slide had a wire support inside, but otherwise was all fondant.

  This design is a challenging one, because of all the different building shapes, that don’t look like standard buildings.  Getting the proportions correct, while still have the right number of cake servings is always tricky.  I was very pleased with how the white glove house came out – much better than my first attempt.  Also, this time around I was able to get some details on the shoe house, such as the mini-door on the side.

  Another feature of 1 year old birthday cakes is that the customer will often ask for a “mini-cake”  to give to the child that they can get messy with.  In this case, I made the mini-cake look like “O’Toodles”, a character from the cartoon that always provides four tools (one a mystery tool!) for Mickey and friends.  In this case, I added some birthday related “tools”.  Also, at the customer request I covered this cake with buttercream instead of fondant, to make it easier for the birthday boy to get messy with it…