I did a four tiered cake (14in, 12 in, 10in & 8in ) for my daughter's first birthday. The theme was 'Sesame Street' so I wanted to do an abstract version of the show's Old School characters.

Big Bird was on the bottom, and I used a plastic leaf tip (the metal ones didn't give the effect I wanted) to pipe feathers from tinted whipped frosting. Big Bird's nest border is the butterscotch haystack candy recipe; I made the candy and placed it in three sections on the outside of the pan so it was easy to place around the base of the cake when it came time for assembly.

For the remaining cakes, I used a grass tip and tinted buttercream frosting. Oscar the Grouch's trashcan was a strip of MMF fondant painted with edible silver dust accented with black. Cookie Monster's border was the easiest--I just bought the little chips ahoy cookies and placed it around the edge.

For Elmo, I tinted some MMF fondant orange and rolled it into a ball, placing it in the cake with a wooden skewer. I used toothpicks to secure the fondant eyes to the cake and drew in the black part with an edible food marker (although, really, I could've spared the $8 for the food pens and used a Sharpie because no one eats that part).

The cake took my friend and I a total of 3 hours to decorate but it was worth it--itwas an absolute hit and fed over 70 people--with leftovers to send home!