LaLa Cake: Tospy Turvy Redo

My wedding was wonderful! The day really special, the memories fun, the cake.... not what I originally had in mind. Tasted great but looks alone, just not right. When I ordered the cake I had described it as a green cake that was topsy turvy with lots of flowers and white ribbon.

It looks great in the picture but the topsy turvy wasn't there, the cake wasn't green and the ribbon wasn't white. Did it ruin the day.. of course not, but I thought I'd try my hand at making more of what I had in mind 2 years ago!

I started with a lot of cake! Red velvet, white cake and banana cake,

our three wedding flavors

Stacked and filled with cream cheese, white frosting and mocha ganache for the banana layer.

I rolled out green fondant, and covered each of the three layers.

There was a 10", 8" and 6" layer

I had trouble with the ganache leaking through the fondant.

I fixed it with a little white frosting tinted green to plug up the tear. The addition of white ribbon secured it for good.

Next came the supports. Since the cake was three tiers of three layers each, I knew it would be heavy. I used some straws and wooden dowels cut level with the cake to support each layer. To get the placement exact I traced the 8" and 6" layer onto a piece of parchment paper. I put the most support right where the side of each layer would be resting it weight on the layer below. On the other side of the layer I had dowels cut so they would stick out of the cake about 1/2", giving the topsy turvy effect.

Each layer had a cardboard base to support the tilting.

The cake sat on top of the carboard with a little frosting to secure it. Once all the layers were assembled I drove a couple wooden dowels through all three tiers to really hold it together. As I quickly learned, make sure your cardboard bases also have holes in them so the dowels go through all the tiers!

Next I filled the spaces with gumpaste flowers. Since this was my first topsy turvy cake, I ended up stacking and restacking the cakes multiple times to get the angles right and the dowels lined up. The fondant at this point was a little 'handled' looking. My husband had the idea of a pattern of sorts to cover up some "oops" spots and tie the wedding theme in.