minnie mouse cake

Sometime last fall, a friend of a friend asked me to make a strawberries and cream Minnie Mouse birthday cake for her daughter. She originally wanted a Minnie Mouse hat cake topper like the one I had made for my friend Helen, but since I had less than a week's notice I wouldn't have enough time for the fondant cap to dry. So we settled on just mouse ears and a fondant bow instead.

To make the fondant bow, I rolled out white fondant and used a ruler and a pizza cutter to cut out a few wide strips. Then I used pieces of thin cardboard, rolled into tubes, to help form the bow.

I also wanted to add polka dots to the cake, so I used the back of a large star tip to cut out little circles of fondant. And for the fondant ears, I rolled out black fondant and used a large round cookie cutter to cut out large circles, to which I inserted toothpicks into one end so that the circle ears could stand up in the cake.

For the cake, I used my favorite vanilla cake recipe (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), baking 1.5 batches of batter in two 10-inch round cake pans. 

Once cooled, I sliced each cake in half horizontally, giving me four cake layers. Then I filled each cake layer with freshly whipped cream and sliced strawberries.

After all of the layers were assembled, I made fresh buttercream and tinted it soft pink, before covering the top and sides of the cake for a quick crumb coat.

After letting the crumb coat chill in the fridge, I added a final coat of frosting, and smoothed it out with an offset spatula. Then I used a medium round tip to pipe a white beaded border around the bottom of the cake.

I let the cake chill in the fridge overnight, and the next morning I was ready to decorate!

First I added my fondant polka dots, using a bit of buttercream on each one to hold it in place.

Then I added my fondant bow ...

... and finally i added my black fondant ears (a.k.a black circles on toothpicks).

I thought the cake turned out pretty cute! Simple, clean, and perfect for a Minnie Mouse party!