Blue & Orange Whimsical Cake

Here is cake numero dos that I made for this past Saturday. This one went to my friend Jeff and his buddies who were also having a joint birthday party. I was quite afraid that no one would eat it and just throw at it each other instead. But alas, my hard work was not in vain. I'm pretty sure Jeff is still running around in circles from his sugar high since he did not want any of the cake to go to waste. [Cut to Jeff in fetal position on the floor getting cake sweats.]

I forgot to mention in the previous post that the cakes were Martha's One Bowl Chocolate Cake as well as her Caramel Buttercream. The one suggestion I have is to mix the cake batter well. It tends to be lumpy and they don't cook out. The buttercream recipes yields 8 cups which I found to fill and crumb coat two 8-inch rounds and one 10-inch round. I had enough to fill the 6-inch but not give it its crumb coat. This cake is a carved 6-inch on top of a carved 8-inch round. I used the same cake recipe and icing to save myself some time for both cakes.

Something I learned in cake decorating class was to use a template for the diamond shaped pieces on the bottom tier. I didn't make a template and don't think I would have preferred to. I wanted all the points to hit at the same spot and because of the geometry of the cake, using a template wouldn't have provided that anyway. So, I basically eyeballed it and divided the cake into even sections and made a slight marking on the top. Then, I just cut each piece by hand making sure each piece fit as I went.