In a couple of weeks my boyfriend is having a small party with some of his old college friends. They used to work in the planetarium at the university.

My boyfriend's and a friend's birthday is at the end of the month, and him and I discussed a cake for the two of them. After asking my boyfriend for some ideas of what they'd like, he suggested: Saturn.

I'm a total newbie, and so I don't have the skills to do anything elaborate.

I do have a cake ball pan -- but the last 3D ball I tried to make... well it didn't work so well because, well, quite frankly, I had even less of a clue than I do now lol (in my favor, it was a year ago)

But I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions of what I could do at a beginner's level? I really don't have experience with fondant, and I'm sure that would probably be a big help if I did.

It doesn't necessarily have to be Saturn, but if I could do that, great, or even just anything to do with astronomy/the planetarium.

I just feel like everything in this area is still a bit beyond me, but if I could do something that's easier, I'm all for ideas!

I would do a 2D Saturn -- much easier, but still there is lots you can do with 2D shapes. Bake a round cake, meaning a flat one like you'd do for a layer cake, and then make the rings out of candy, something that is easy to work with and will stay rigid so you can have it sticking up from the cake. Use fondant/gumpaste, candy melts, melted hard candies (easier than doing hard candy from scratch) or whatever you want to try.

Alternatively, do a sheet cake, just a plain rectangle, frost it with dark chocolate (you can add black coloring if you want it even darker) and on top, put a representation of the solar system, with all the planets being basically fondant balls or circles. It's a bit tricky to cover a cake in fondant, but using it just for decorations, cut out like sugar cookies or molded into simple shapes, is easy and a lot of fun to play around with.

Search the gallery for "solar system" and you will see a ton of examples of this basic idea.

Holly

I was going to do an astronomy cake for a friend in November, but I was getting married the week after that and didn't have time. Here's what I was going to do:

Bake a large 10 or 12 inch round and ice it with a deep royal blue/black swirl buttercream. Make planets out of fondant (which would be really easy for you to do as a beginner) and put them in a circle around the sun, which was going to be either fondant or a half-ball pan iced in yellow/orange buttercream.

On the sides, I was going to buy the white or yellow dragees from Michael's (Wilton brand) and make constellations out of them. Then, I was going to use either shimmer dust or luster dust mixed with extract or alcohol to paint comets all around the cake.

Hope this helps!

Thank you so much for your suggestions!

To be honest, I checked out the gallery but couldn't find much -- but you'd think I would have thought to search under solar system... That certainly gave me more of a variety.

The suggestions here and from what I've been looking through in the solar system photos, it's definitely putting me on the right track, and am starting to be able to visualize what I'd like to do.

Thanks!