Yesterday I made my first attempt at a “Mad Hatter cake” I sure did learn a lot about the art of cake making. Mad Hatter cakes are obviously named after the Mad Hatter’s tea party from the classic novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; I love the literary reference and can imagine similar cakes filling the quirky party table. This style of cake is really fun for birthday parties, bridal and baby showers, etc. Sometimes a bride will even pick a Mad Hatter for a wedding cake, and that is when you know they are going to have the kind of nontraditional reception that you want to be at!
Altogether, from start to finish I have 10 hours invested into this cake, and to be honest I will not make another Mad Hatter for my own amusement, because it does involve a great amount of work, and an even greater amount of patience in order to cut and place the actual cake materials correctly.
Here is how it is done. I chose to do three layers, anything over three for this style and the cake becomes messy and unorganized. Each layer has to be cut at an angle, with a circle cut out of the middle in order for the cake to appear crooked and leaning when in reality it stands straight and level. Needless to say this is the most difficult part of the entire process, and a good portion of the cake is cut and discarded.
The first layer of my cake is cherry chip baked in a 10 inch pan. I found that 10 inches was not enough space to work with, 12 inches would be more sufficient. I frosted and covered the cake in white frosting, and with black fondant cut zebra strips and attached them with piping gel.
The second layer is chocolate cake, frosted and covered with pink fondant. I piped on the swirl design with black frosting and a size two round tip. A note on the black frosting and fondant, buy these, never attempt to make them on your own. You will never be able to get them black enough they will always appear grey and become very sticky with too much food coloring. Instead you can purchase these products at any specialty bake shop such as ABC Cakes in Phoenix, or Michaels carries a limited quantity.
The top layer is funfetti (I thought it went well with the theme and my husband loves this flavor), covered in white fondant, with pink and black fondant polka dots. To complete the look, I stuck hot pink feathers into the top layer, forcing them to stand straight up, and adorned the middle and bottom layer with ribbon and hot pink tooling.
Easy enough right? Not exactly, but after everything I put into this cake I am very pleased with the way it turned out and have grown immensely as a cake creator as a result.
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