Crissa's Cake Corner!: Rainbow Balloon-Silhouette Cake

I love the colours on this fun balloon cake. It's a nice design to go with if one doesn't have a particular theme for a party, or for a rainbow or balloon-themed party, of course. The silhouettes on the bottom can be changed up, depending on the occasion. Maybe a little girl holding a balloon for a first birthday? Or even a silhouette of Winnie the Pooh or another cartoon character would be cute too.

Rainbow Balloon-Silhouette Cake

This was a pretty large 3-tier cake which fed about 80 people. The top tier is red velvet cake filled with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. The middle tier is vanilla butter cake, filled with vanilla bean crème Mousseline. The bottom tier is Devil's food cake, filled with whipped dark chocolate ganache. Lots of flavours here to make sure every guest gets a slice of their favourite one.

vanilla bean crème Mousseline

Crème Mousseline is a really yummy, silky smooth German buttercream, sinfully made with 12 egg yolks and the seeds scraped from a whole vanilla bean pod. It's basically pastry cream, that's whipped with softened unsalted butter at a 2:1 weight ratio. I can eat this stuff by the spoonful.

vanilla butter cake with vanillaa bean filling

super elastic Massa Ticino fondant

Now, normally I would never attempt to cover a cake larger than 8" with a large piece of fondant using the regular store-brand fondant that I usually use because of really bad cracking issues. I will usually cover the cake using the wrap-around method + fondant lid, like with this rainbow hot air balloon cake or this 3-tiered cake. The problem with that method is that there is visible a seam between the sides and the top of the cake.

woohoo, no cracks, no tears, no elephant skin!

But, after having read all the rave reviews of Massa Ticino Tropic Fondant online, and trying it out on this Peppa Pig Apple Tree cake with pretty good results, I was eager to work with it again. Massa Ticino is amazing to handle. It's very elastic and there's really no problem rolling it thinly to cover a cake, resulting in a smooth, crack-free finish. This stuff doesn't tear! It's awesome. It took me literally 5 minutes to cover each cake tier, first time right. It was a muuuuuuch better experience than the usual stressful, rolling, covering, cracking, removing and re-rolling, frustrating time I have when covering a cake with store-brand fondant.

perfectly smooth, crack-free fondant-covered 10" cake

I am a Massa Ticino convert!! Even covering the large 10" round, 4" high bottom tier was a breeze!! This stuff costs 3 times as much as the fondant I usually use, but it is worth every penny. It is very important to have a really smooth buttercream crumb coat on the cake under this fondant, because Massa Ticino is so elastic that every lump and bump will show through. I want to try ganaching a cake and covering it with this stuff next, to get super sharp edges.

hand-cut fondant silhouettes

Ok back to the cake (ha! sorry about the Massa Ticino spiel. It's just so refreshing to finally have found an easy to work-with fondant!) I wanted to represent the birthday boy and his mom and dad on the cake, so I cut silhouettes of a family of 3 out of black fondant, using a printed image as a guide and a sharp Xacto knife to cut.

waiting for fondant details to dry

I let the silhouettes dry fully before sticking them on the cake with a little royal icing. I love the "movement" in the silhouettes, like a family taking a relaxing stroll through a park, with the boy holding a bunch of balloons!

bottom tier of the cake

I used the back end of a large piping tip to cut out all the circles for the balloons out of 8 different colours of fondant. I only attached the balloons on the cake after it was delivered. This cake was transported as three separate tiers, and then assembled on site at the party venue, because I didn't want to risk travelling with a 3-tier stacked cake! And because a 3-tier cake is pretty hefty and would be very challenging to lift (as I learned from my very first 3-tiered cake).

After stacking the cakes (making sure there are internal support dowels in each layer), a royal icing border was piped around each tier using a round piping tip, before attaching the balloons using some royal icing as well, starting from the top and working downwards. Some hand-cut fondant clouds were placed around the cake to finish the "sky" look.