Two Tier, Two Layer Chocolate Birthday Cake, part 3

Remember me? The two tier, two layer Chocolate Birthday cake? Of course you do. I've been eager to get back to this one and finish it. Today was the day! I had a lot of fun! Every step of this cake was an "I love you" to my daughter.

When I last showed you this cake, the four pieces were still separate and the filling was made. I filled them that day and they've been tightly wrapped in the freezer until today. I made up a batch of buttercream to, as the Cake Boss would say "dirty ice them."

Here is what they looked like after being "dirty iced". The smaller one is directly on a tinfoil covered cardboard that is just its size. I set it on a cookie tin so I could pick it up without mussing the icing. I stuck it to the cardboard with a small blob of piping gel. I wanted to make sure my top layer doesn't squish my bottom layer, so I inserted 5 separators (I cut 2 bamboo skewers to size and pushed them in.)

This was just to show you... then I pushed the spacers in all the way. The dents around the top were made by a plate the size of the smaller cake, so I could be sure the picks would be within the edges of the upper cake.

Next, I used my handy dandy Wilton's Easy Roll mat and rolled the green to size for the smaller cake. Love the round markings - you can get the fondant the perfect size the first time! Then you just invert the whole thing over the cake and smooth it down. This hunk of fondant was, I realized too late, a little small for my cake and I had to do some stretching, which left it a bit bumpy around the edges, but I will cover that with the decorations. I did the pink the same way and then carefully set the green cake on the pink one. So far, so good. 

Funny, I didn't mean to leave anything but the cake in this picture, but it is a clear picture of what tools are essential to the process: offset spatula (on the left) to smooth buttercream and fillings (I LOVE that tool!), white smoothing tool, to ensure a smooth fondant layer, the shortening wrapper - use a dab of shortening to prevent sticking to the fondant and finally, a pizza cutter - to trim the fondant nice and neat around the bottom of the cake.

"Hey, it's starting to come together", I thought, as I added all those bowling pins and balls. I stuck those on with a bit of piping gel. The black details are tinted piping gel. I rolled the green and pink fondant in the ziplocks into long strands. Using the circle markings on the mat, I made them long enough to fit around the larger of the two cakes. Then I cut them into bits with the pizza cutter (but not on my precious mat!) All the bits were the same size so I could make them into even little balls to trim the cake. Remember how "every step of this cake was an 'I love you' to my daughter"? Well, let me tell you, there were a lot of "I love you's" when it came to rolling the 92 balls I made and applied to the cake! 

And there you have it! Took all afternoon and into making supper time, but it was fun and it looks just like I wanted it to. I take no credit for the idea, by the way, it was on the internet at CakeCentral.com, but the execution was all me!