Early Mardi Gras

This cake was for my cousin, Katie's 22nd Birthday. Her sister Meagan and Dad asked me to do this cake for her. They came up with the Mardi Gras theme. One of Katie's favorite things is New Orleans and Mardi Gras.

I was a little short on time for this one so I made it a bit smaller than I normally would have made a birthday cake for a party of about 25 people.

So someone brought brownies too, which worked out nice.

I decided to make a chocolate coffee flavored cake with vanilla buttercream frosting. I must have been having an awesome lucky day or was in the zone while I made the cake and frosting because it was SO yummy. A lot better tasting than some of my other cakes have been.

I was really proud of the flavor of this cake.

As I said before I was short on time so I didn't get the chance to make the Mardi Gras mask out of gum-paste like I wanted to. So I went to the local party store down the street and bought one. And what do you know, becuase Mardi Gras is right around the corner they had a plethora of choices. What great timing.

So for the design I decided to do purple fondant over the whole cake, with green fondant diamond shapes. I added gold sugar pearls to put between the green diamonds. The gold bead around the bottom and on top of the cake (by the mask) is a beaded necklace from the party store. Although it wasn't totally edible (like I'd prefer) I still think it turned out quite nice.

This is Katie, showing off her Mardi Gras cake, isn't she cute? I just love her!