Fighter Jet Birthday Cake

Big boy Evan is turning 5. His mummy asked him what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday. He pointed to a simple round cake and said he wanted a toy fighter jet on top! His mummy wasn't to excited by his choice in cake design, but, the birthday boy gets what the birthday boy wants!

Fighter Jet Birthday Cake

This cake is an 8" round, 4" tall 3-layer Devil's Food Cake, with two layers of whipped dark chocolate ganache and chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream. It weighed 2.7 kg! One delicious chocolate cake. It is simply decorated like a sky, with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream tinted sky blue using food colouring gel. At first I was worried that it was gonna stay a teal-green colour, because that's what it looked like when I first added a few toothpick-streaks of food colouring gel. But I boldly added in an addition small blob of colouring and the buttercream thankfully turned a nice shade of sky blue.

(pretty) smooth buttercream finish

I'm still working on the technique to get a nice and smooth finish for a buttercream cake. After applying a liberal coating of buttercream on the cake, the sides are smoothed out by using a scraper. One hand holds the scraper against the side of the cake at an angle, while the other hand turns the cake turntable in one complete circle. It requires a bit of practice to get it right. I'm pretty happy with how smooth I managed to get the cake. :) 

I added the birthday boy's name on a fondant cloud, and added hand-cut clouds all over the rest of the cake. The 3-D clouds on top of the cake were made by taking balls of fondant and randomly poking them from the inside using a ball tool to make them "fluffier." I also added "Happy birthday" on the cake board, using a silicone mold to shape the letters. 

Of course, as per the birthday boy's request, a simple silver fighter jet topped the cake, flying high above the clouds. Happy 5th Birthday, Evan! Hope you had a nice celebration with your family and helped yourself to a nice big slice of chocolate cake! 

Happy 5th Birthday, Evan!