Unicorn Rainbow Cake

Birthday girl Kate was celebrating her 6th birthday with a fun party at Impressions Art Studio. To go with all the colourful paint, she requested for a sky blue cake with clouds, topped with a rainbow, and her favourite animal, a unicorn, white with blue hair. When I delivered her brother's Rocket Ship Cake, she was so excited and said that she wanted  just as colourful a cake, but with the words "Happy 6th Birthday, Kate" on it instead!

Unicorn Rainbow Cake

The cake is three layers of Devil's chocolate cake, filled with whipped dark chocolate ganache, and frosted with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. 

unicorn sculpting in progress

First, I worked on the white unicorn. I wasn't exactly going for a My Little Pony look, but I did make it in the same way as the Applejack pony on top of this cake, except with longer legs and a differently-shaped head. I spent some time rolling little "snakes" of blue fondant for the unicorn's hair, attaching them onto the unicorn with a little bit of water. I added a pink horn for the unicorn cuz I wanted to emphasize that it was a girl unicorn. 

the eyes bring the unicorn to life

My daughter said that the eyes that I first put on the unicorn were scary (I didn't even take a picture of it), so I wiped those off and went with large "cutesy" eyes: light blue iris, large black pupil and two white dots for the reflections. I think the eyes really give the unicorn some life.

colourful fondant "snakes" make a rainbow

Because the unicorn turned out to be pretty tall, I decided to make an extra tall rainbow to go behind it. The extra tall rainbow is made in the same way as a regular-sized rainbow, except that the ends are much longer, with the skewers stuck through the straight part to help keep the rainbow upright on the cake. 

stand them up to dry on styrofoam

I let the fondant unicorn and rainbow toppers dry overnight in an aircoditioned room, to make sure they were nice and hard before placing them on top of the cake at the venue.

love love love Massa Ticino Tropic

Now, to cover the cake in fondant. I was less worried about draping a big, thinly rolled piece of fondant over the 4" tall cake, now that I've had some practice working with Carma's super awesome Massa Ticino Tropic fondant. This stuff is seriously a breeze to work with. You can roll it really thin and even man-handle it, and it won't tear on you! 

fancy letters and hand-cut clouds

Actually, when I first rolled it out and draped it over the cake, it was at least 1 inch too short from the cake board, on two areas in the cake! Normally, I would have just taken it off and re-rolled it, but this was Massa Ticino fondant! I wanted to test just how stretchy it could be. Sure enough, once I smoothed all the fondant over the surface of the cake, and I gently tugged the fondant down using a fondant smoother, I had just enough to cover the sides of the cake where the fondant was initially too short. And the best part? No rips or tears!! Best. Fondant. Ever. 

standing rainbow words!

I hand-cut some white fondant clouds and then used fancy tappits cutters to cut Kate's name out of fondant. I stuck the pink letters on white fondant first, and then cut around each letter, leaving a small white border around so that they would "pop" off the sky. 

To add more colour on the cake, I cut the "Happy Birthday" wording out of rainbow colours, letting them dry hard before standing them up on the fondant-covered cake board using some royal icing. 

edible unicorn figurine, close-up

view from the top. love the sky-high rainbow.

I am so glad to hear that the birthday girl absolutely adored her unicorn rainbow cake, and that she and all her friends came back for second serving of cake! Happy 6th Birthday, Kate! 

Happy 6th Birthday, Kate!