Mini Paw Patrol Cake

Here's a small Paw Patrol cake for a lady whose mother wanted to try out my lychee cake before deciding if she should place an order for a larger cake. Her mother is very particular with cakes, apparently! I always get nervous when I have to make a cake to suit older folks' palettes cuz they just aren't into sweet things. But for me, cake is a dessert, so it should be on the sweet side. Good thing I have my mother-in-law as a guinea pig. Hahah.  

Mini Paw Patrol Cake

So the cake is 4 layers of lychee sponge cake (6"), filled with lychee Swiss meringue buttercream and lots of juicy lychee pieces. Sponge cake would normally go better with a lighter cream filling, but I went with buttercream because I wanted the cake to be able to support the fondant. Sponge cakes are really light in texture, so I was concerned that the cake would cave in if it was filled with cream instead. 

lots of juicy lychee pieces

I covered the cake in a thin layer of white fondant, and added an edible image cut out of the Paw Patrol badge. I used the back of a piping tip and a small piping nozzle to cut out paw prints from red, yellow and navy blue fondant. I bordered the cake with small navy blue fondant balls.

hey who walked all over the cake!?

view from the top

I am glad that the cake was well received. Next time, I will definitely try filling the cake with fresh whipped cream instead of buttercream, so that there's a better mouth-feel with the sponge cake. Looking forward to making the bigger version of this Paw Patrol cake for a little man's birthday celebration! (Note: There still needs a buttercream dam around the cream for the filling and the cake needs to be crumb-coated in buttercream and not fresh cream cuz the high water content in fresh cream would be disastrous for the fondant)

Paw Patrol cake is ready to roll