Need Help Making My 1St - My Sister's Birthday Is Tomorrow!
Decorating By Tscookies Updated 9 Sep 2006 , 11:46am by Tscookies
Ok, in my lifetime I have only made the kinds of cakes from a box that you put into a 9x13 pan and frost outta the can. I do a lot of cookie decorating, so I do know how to use fondant and royal icing. For some reason, I'm really getting the bug to make my sister a cake for her 45th birthday tomorrow. I was wondering if you cake decorators could help me make a nice little cake for her. I'm thinking about a two tiered round cake (6" and 4" rounds). I thought I'd use Duncan Hines since I've heard that many people like it and I'll pick a buttercream recipe off this site. Then, I'm going to cover it with fondant and put stripes and circles on it, and maybe even some royal icing touches. Nothing too elaborate ... just a simple, sweet, thoughtful cake.
Will I only need one box of cake mix? Does anyone have any suggestions for doctoring it up to make it taste even better? Do I need to freeze the cake before frosting it? As far as filling, should I slice each round in half, fill, and then put the rounds back together? Anything else I should know about to make a cake that won't make me go crazy?!?
I'll probably use pink and green - she loves hot pink. If anyone has any pictures of a cake I could mock, please let me know. If it turns out, I'll post the picture of her cake when I'm all done. THANK YOU!!
hello there,
as far as making a two tiered cake...i would probably use two cake mixes, just to be on the safe side...i don't know about freezing the cake because i've had problems when i would ice my cake and then put it in the fridge to set and then when i take it out and put the fondant on it, it would start to "sweat" and give it a real shiny look...it was terrible trying to add flowers and stuff on it...some of the posts on here recommend just leaving the iced cake out so that your buttercream would crust, thereby giving your cake a firmness to it when you put the fondant on it....as far as a design? anything that you make will be lovely 
make sure you post the pix 
here's a pic of a cake pinkbunny made, its pink and green and has stripes like you wanted.
http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=coppermine&file=displayimage&meta=favpics&cat=0&pos=-41157
you can find some really good buttercream recipes on this site.
for filling slice cake and do a icing dam with a coupler so that the filling wont ooze out, then fill and return top half. you can then crumbcoat (thin layer of frosting to hold in crumbs) and then let it sit for a little while so that the layers will set then frost with another coat and cover with fondant.
for a 6'' & 4'' 2 layer you will need more than 1 box of mix but you may not need the entire 2 boxes, if your pans are 2'' high each then you need two layers to get a nice height, if you have a 3'' pan that would work great and you dont need to make 2 layers. fill your pan 3/4 full. there are a couple of recipes on here on how to doctor your cake mix and if you do that then you will probably only need 1 box. do a search in recipes for doctored cake mix. hope this helps. goodluck and post a pic when you are done, i'm sure she will love it.
i know, i had it in my favs and as soon as i read pink & green it popped into my head.
Well, thank you so much for the encouragement and the picture ... but I'm throwing in the towel. My cake was undercooked, and I don't have time to try to make a new one. Cakes just really intimidate me because of all of the things that can go wrong with them. Plus, I have a million other things I need to get done this weekend! 
I think I'll stick to cookies. I tried it, and now I'm going to my lovely bakery down the road (not Walmart, I promise!!) to get one from them! lol
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