Snowboard Cake

My first cake of 2015 was a 40th birthday cake for a good friend. A group of friends spent the occasion together at our favorite ski hill, so that became the theme for the cake. Here are a few photos to show the progression of making this cake, the largest I have made thus far, but also the most fun!

For this cake I used four layers, 6", 8", 9" and  12" sizes. I used my Mom's "Best Ever Chocolate Cake Recipe", and a buttercream icing recipe, slightly modified, that I found on the web when searching for snow white buttercream.

I stacked the cakes, with layers of buttercream in between. I did not use dowels or cake board for this cake. You can see in the photo below that I did not level the cakes - I wanted the mountain to be as high as possible, so I did not level them off at all. Notice the huge amount of buttercream I needed in between the top two - it was a trade-off for a taller cake, but I wouldn't recommend it normally, as that was just too much icing.

I then carved a slope into the cake to mimic a mountain. The bottom layer is extra large, providing a place for my snowboarder.

I used a giant icing tip to cover the cake, and just filled in any empty spots with a smaller tip. Because the cake is chocolate with white icing, crumbs would be very visible, so I find the large tip is the best option.

Two major steps are included in this photo. First, I smoothed out the icing on the cake using the hot water and metal spatula technique. I didn't have to wory about it being perfect because it is snow.

Then, I assembled my snowboarder. I found some great instructions for a snowboarder here: 

I used gumpaste and fondant to build mine - the skin and black parts are pre-colored fondant. The others are gumpaste I tinted myself.

I didn't take many more pictures as I put this cake together, because my hands were always a mess however, I did a few more steps to finish this cake up:

- the snowboard trail is made from a bright white icing, which I made using only shortening rather than the 50/50 shortening - butter mix used in the other batches. I dragged a snowboard track in with a large spatula. I piped the outsides of the trail - this will be used to hold the candles later.

- the trees are made using ice cream cones and green buttercream icing and a #18 tip, following directions that I found here.

- icing sugar and sugar flakes are sprinkled over the trees and entire cake

- the Over the Hill route sign is made out of coffee stir sticks and candy melts