tiered peaches and cream layer cake with handmade gold fondant letter toppers

In addition to the blue bunting smash cake and Korean hanbok cookies that I made for baby Aaron's first birthday, I also made this tiered monogrammed cake for the party! Irene had wanted a white tiered cake topped with Aaron's initials in gold letters.

For the fondant letters, I started making them about a week in advance, to give them time to dry in time. I rolled out white fondant to about 1/8 inch thick, and then used a ruler and a pizza cutter to cut out long strips of fondant, with I used to form my letters.

Next I used this gold edible cake paint, or "cake graffiti", to spray my letters a pretty gold color.

I ended up spraying multiple coats, to get a nice deep gold color.

For the cake itself, Irene wanted the same cake that I had made for her baby shower - a fluffy vanilla cake filled with fresh nectarines and homemade whipped cream. So I baked up my favorite vanilla cake (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book) in two 8-inch cake pans, and then doubled the recipe to bake a larger set of layers in two 10-inch cake pans. 

Once cooled, I sliced each cake layer in half horizontally, giving me four 8-inch layers, and four 10-inch layers. Then I filled each layer with freshly whipped cream and fresh sliced nectarines.

Here's the 8-inch cake being assembled, and then frosted with cream cheese buttercream.

And here's the 10-inch cake being assembled.

After chilling both layers, I stacked them (with bamboo skewers inside to hold the top layer in place, see this tiered circus carnival cake for a picture of what I do with the skewers). Then, the final touch was placing the gold fondant letters on top (secured with a bit of frosting on the bottom of each letter).

I loved how the lettering turned out!

At the party, Irene did such a great job on setting up the Korean "dol" table! And look how cute the Korean hanbok cookies that I made look plated on gold trays next to the tiered cake!

Here's a quick photo collage of the party.

And a precious photo of the family :)

Happy Birthday, baby Aaron! Your party was spectacular!