My dear friend who has been like a second mother to me is turning 60 and I want to make an amazing cake for her surprise birthday party. He biggest passions are God and children, and she is awesome. She travels to Africa to help kids with aids and does programs with kids here as well, in the inner city and he suburbs. I don't want it to be like a Bible with a nice scripture on it, I want it to be a 3-4 tier fondant cake with designs that represent her...she is very modern, down to earth, not fancy at all...I am having a hard time coming up with a design!

If anyone has any ideas, please let me know!

Thanks!

Hi! Wilton makes a really cute "People" fondant cutter. I just recently purchased this for $4.50 and it can make boy or girl figures. I thought it would be really cute to make children going all around one of the tiers to represent "all God's children of the world." The clothes and skin tones could all be different! Maybe colorful flowers and trees on one tier, suns and rainbows on another. I love the whimsical look! Hope this helps
Lynnette

I like Irohring's suggestion but wonder if you can work an african sunset w/wild animals into it? Maybe the center tier. If you have an airbrush you can get that orangey sunset color w/black animals hiding in/behind green leaves/trees (jungle). HTH

How about something along these lines:

http://cakecentral.com/articles/662/how-to-carve-a-spiral-cake

I'm thinking each tier would have a different background (inner city/Africa etc) and the road itself would have different textures (eg. dust road, smooth tar, gravel etc) depending on what it's representing. It's sort of like a story of where she's been physically and figuratively in her life. You could have boulders (obstacles), road signs etc along the way and little children on/along the road.

Just a thought.

I love the ideas! I generally have a hard time getting started with ideas. I had thought if doing kids holding hands around a tier, so I am glad others like the idea as well. I think I am going to combine all of these ideas into one wonderful cake. I know she will love it. Thanks for info about the cutters, too! Its due next weekend but I think I'll start making the fondant cut outs soon, since I use fondarific and it will never dry out. I don't have an airbrush for the African sunset, but I am pretty decent at painting with icing colors and have been able to pull off wood grain and things like that, so I can probably make it work.

Thanks again for the great input! Now to get started instead of waiting until a couple days out and working for 36 hours straight...