Graduation Cake

I spent the majority of my evenings this week working on a graduation cake for my sister-in-law, Cristina. She graduated from high school last month, and her party is tomorrow. Because of the number of people invited to the celebration, she needed a pretty gigantic cake--a full sheet cake. I had never made a cake that big, but happily accepted the challenge.

(Pardon the white square--behind it is Cristina's school logo. For her privacy, I didn't want to broadcast the name of her school. So you'll just have to imagine what a kickass job I did recreating the logo. HA!)

The cake turned out well, but not without a few obstacles along the way. The biggest issue occurred on Wednesday night when I tried to transfer one of the cakes and the entire thing crumbled apart. I had to throw it out and start all over. NOT A GOOD NIGHT, I assure you.

Anyway, it all worked out in the end. I made the cake out of two 11 x 15" cakes, one chocolate, one vanilla. I iced them together with vanilla buttercream. I decorated today, also with vanilla buttercream. I used my alphabet cookie cutters to outline the letters in the icing, then filled them in.

Look at my little cap and diploma! I was so proud. The bottom part of the cap was just black buttercream with black sugar crystals sprinkled on top. For the mortar board part of the cap, I traced the pattern on wax paper using melted chocolate, filled it in, sprinkled it liberally with black sugar crystals while it was still wet, then let it dry. Then I squeezed a blob of black icing on the cake and placed the chocolate mortar board on top of it to give it a 3-D look. I got this idea on Cake Central, and it turned out super cute!

The tassel, diploma, and ribbon were all made of marshmallow fondant. I had never worked with it before, so that required a bit of practice time, too.

Congratulations, Cristina!