Sometime last fall, my friend Joanne asked me to make a smash cake for her daughter's first birthday. She was going to make a wall of multicolored DIY paper fans for the backdrop of the photo booth, and she wanted the cake to match it! And since her daughter loves strawberry banana, it would be a strawberry banana cake on the inside!
I made a quick sketch of what the cake could look like, and after getting a thumbs up from Joanne, I got to work with making the fan toppers out of fondant. I saw many examples online - some of them were actually folded accordian-style as you would with a real paper fan, but I decided to simplify them by cutting out various sizes and colors of fondant with a round cookie cutter, and then using a toothpick to make the "folds" of the fans. Then I let them dry for several days so that they could harden.
When it was time to make the cake, I baked up two 6-inch rounds of my favorite vanilla cake (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), and after letting them cool I sliced each cake in half horizontally, giving me four cake layers. Then I filled each layer with freshly whipped cream, sliced bananas, and strawberries.
Once all of the layers were filled and stacked, I covered the top and sides of the cake with fresh buttercream (recipe also in my book!). For this I typically do a quick crumb coat of frosting, let chill for 30 minutes in the fridge, and then I do a finally smooth coat of frosting.
After the smoothing out the frosting with an offset spatula, I piped a beaded border on the top and bottom of the cake, and piped her daughter's name on the side of the cake.
Then it was time to attach the fondant fans! They had hardened nicely by now, and all I needed was a bit of buttercream on the back of each fan to hold them in place.
I loved the look of the multicolored fans! And the bright colors made it look so festive!
Hope you had a happy happy birthday, baby Presley!!!
