charity ball cake

by Tamara
(plymouth uk)

the charity ball organisers wanted a show stopper for their do, they asked me to make it in the charities colours (navy red and royal blue) it needed to feed about 200 people, i must say i had agreed to make this cake when i believed the guest list was more like 40!!! the shock when they said 200 nearly killed me, but on with the show i thought lets give it a whirl, so i made 4 cakes all round fruit cakes in sizes 12", 10", 8" and lastly 6", i then marzipaned each cake and allowed to dry overnight, i home coloured the 3 colours of fondant icing using colouring pastes. i did a basic cake cover icing layer on each cake, the i decided on the patterrns, i cut out the stripes and attached to 2nd layer by lightly wetting the stripe and cake first, when all done i used a straw to make circle indents all over the bottom layer (hard to see in pic) then i got a smooth edge round cookie cutter in diffferentt sizes and cut out contrasting circles andd attached to the 1st tier in the same way as the stripes, then the 3rd layer i used an oval shape cutter and a smaller cutter to make cut outs and attached in the same way again, i used vertical stripes on the top layer with matching balls inbetweeen the stripes. each layer was finished with contrasting balls made out of fondant icing. The topper was made using fondant icing rolled to about 1/4 inch and then cut using shaped cookie cutters they were then pushed onto florists wire (which was pre shaped) and left for about 3 dayss to dry completely (i made this ahead of time) i pushed a posy pick with oasis in it into the top tier of the cake and then inserted all the wires the oasis lets you choose how to position each and every wire, which waas important for this cake as i had to do initials which had to stay in order!