Budweiser Can Cake

This cake is for my buddy Greg's 27th birthday, whose drink of choice is Budweiser or "Bud heavy" as he calls it.  This is definitely the hardest cake I've had to make so far.  There were a few moments where I seriously thought that I would be submitting my cake to cakewrecks.com but I actually love how it turned out.  I also love that the cake is homemade funfetti with vanilla buttercream.  Adult cake on the outside, kid cake on the inside.

I used a classic white cake recipe and added 2 to 3 tablespoons of rainbow jimmies to the batter before dividing it into pans.  The cake is made of nine 6-inch rounds.

I made a base for the cake so that it would appear to taper in by hot gluing together 3 cardboard rounds that I had cut about .25 an inch off all around.  I cut a hole through the center and glued a disposable chopstick sticking straight up.  I had also made sure I cut a hole through the center of the cake board that the bottom 6-inch cake round was sitting on so that I would be able to insert the chopstick up the center of the cake, giving it stability.  I also inserted a second chopstick going down into the center from the top too.  

The hardest part was actually getting the cake covered in fondant.  I tried about 5 different times.  I rolled out a big circle of fondant to drape over and tried to smooth out the folds but it didn't work out because there were was too many folds to smooth down.  The only way I was successful in getting it covered was to roll out a long piece of fondant on a piece of parchment paper and wrap it around the sides.  I could have really used a second pair of hands for this.  Then I rolled another smaller circle to put on top and join the seams as best as I could.

The lid was a bit worrisome as well.  I've never made gray fondant or gum paste and when I added a little bit of black food dye to the white gum paste it came out to be a slightly purple at first.  It turns out that when it dries the color settles down to a gray.  I cut a circle for the lid and made indentations for the mouth of the can and attached it to the top with a little water.  I rolled out a long piece skinny piece for the rim by hand, flattened it out a bit and glued it to the edge of the circle.  The bottom of the can was done similarly then attached with buttercream. Then I painted everything with silver dust mixed with almond extract.  All the silver parts dried nicely.

To do the label, I marked off a rectangle by using painters tape.  To get in the details like the logo, any other lettering and the Budweiser seal, I etched into the fondant with the end of a paint brush first, then painted over.  The label is repeated on the opposite of the one seen here.  All work on the label was hand painted with food coloring gel or edible gold dust mixed with a bit of almond extract.  I've also read that others use lemon extract or vodka to make a paint.  
I'm a perfectionist and I nitpick at the flaws that I see on the cake that others probably don't.  For example, I wish the fondant was smoother with no seams.  I wish the lines were cleaner with no smudges.  I wish the lettering I did for the "genuine" part was more even with the one on the bottom.  But still, I have to say... I'm really proud of how the cake came out.  And near the end I sent a picture to Phil, who posted it on his BMW forum.  He said he got a lot of comments, one of which included the last picture in this post.

Carved and crumb coated.  You can see a tiny bit of the tapered base.

Cake finally covered in fondant.  Sorry the pic is blurry.

With the lid and bottom.  Again, sorry for the blurry picture.

View of the top.

Close up of the writing.

I totally agree.  Happy birthday Greg!!