I can't remember where, but I've seen a tutorial on how to make the top of the look like the fondant is bursting and a character is coming out of the top of the cake....does anyone know what I'm talking about? The fondant looks like it has been cut and peeled back.....anyone have any ideas on how to do that? Thanks so much!

I've done this a few times. There's a barbie cake, iron man and an elmo present cake in my gallery if you want a visual.

I just cut a piece of fondant large enough to cover the top of my cake, and before laying it on top, I made slices starting and the center point of my piece of fondant an inch or so out, depending on how big I wanted the "tear" to be. Then I carefully placed that on my already fondant covered cake and peeled back the tears that I made. for a couple of the cakes I also cut out some additional triangle shaped pieces of fondant and stuck them in there to make it look like a bigger burst.

Hope that makes sense.

I've made a cake like that - actually, I took the design from another one that appeared here. What I did was to put two circles of a contrasting color on the top of the cake with a nice powdering of cornstarch in between. Then I covered the cake in the color fondant I wanted, making sure this layer of fondant stuck to the top contrasting circle (I think I used a small amount of CMC glue. Once you've done all this, you have three layers of fondant on the top of the cake. The top layer and the middle layer stick together, but the middle layer and the bottom one don't because of the cornstarch. I used an Xacto knife to cut (very carefully!) through the top two layers like I was drawing an asterisk. Then I (again, very carefully!) peeled each piece back and propped then into the position I wanted them to stay in with crumpled kleenex. I let them dry like that for a day or so, the went on decorating the cake. What you end up with is a contrasting color on the inside of the "popped" part, both underneath and also lining the peeled back portions. Here's the link to my cake, along with a big thank you to frostedmemories for the original design:
http://cakecentral.com/gallery/2183448/fifty
Now that I'm looking at it again, I probably could have gotten the little triangular pieces to stand up a little more! Oh, well.

I've made a cake like that - actually, I took the design from another one that appeared here. What I did was to put two circles of a contrasting color on the top of the cake with a nice powdering of cornstarch in between. Then I covered the cake in the color fondant I wanted, making sure this layer of fondant stuck to the top contrasting circle (I think I used a small amount of CMC glue. Once you've done all this, you have three layers of fondant on the top of the cake. The top layer and the middle layer stick together, but the middle layer and the bottom one don't because of the cornstarch. I used an Xacto knife to cut (very carefully!) through the top two layers like I was drawing an asterisk. Then I (again, very carefully!) peeled each piece back and propped then into the position I wanted them to stay in with crumpled kleenex. I let them dry like that for a day or so, the went on decorating the cake. What you end up with is a contrasting color on the inside of the "popped" part, both underneath and also lining the peeled back portions. Here's the link to my cake, along with a big thank you to frostedmemories for the original design:
http://cakecentral.com/gallery/2183448/fifty
Now that I'm looking at it again, I probably could have gotten the little triangular pieces to stand up a little more! Oh, well.

Someone posted a visual tutorial here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mka900/3395760669/in/set-72157615994330825/

Fantastic!!! Thank you all