Mad Hatter Hat Cake #2

My 2nd Mad Hatter Hat Cake.  The 1st one was for my niece, this one was for her best friend.  A lot of improvements made from the 1st one; One of the many benefits from making the same cake again - learning what to do better the next time around!

I baked 3, 6" round cakes (each layer was 2" tall) with 5 layers of Strawberry Buttercream filling: Chocolate - Vanilla - Strawberry Sour Cream Cakes.

Here are the 3 cakes stacked.  Through the insanity of working on 2 different cakes at the same time, I did an ganache dam then filled the layers with strawberry buttercream.  NOTE!  Don't do a dam when you will be carving the cake!  It made it very messy and very difficult to cut nice, smooth sides with.  Work on a frozen or at least a very well chilled cake - makes it easier to carve.  The hat is sitting upside down here with a 4.5" circle that will become the bottom base and used as a guide to carve the cake to.

 

Next, cover the cake with ganache and make the hat's rim.  I rolled out a 9" round circle and lay it over a 9" board that was heavily dusted with corn starch to keep it from sticking.  I then cutout a 4.5" round out of the middle for the base of the cake to sit in.  Brushed the entire rim with chocolate ganache then let it sit overnight in the fridge to firm up with some balls of foil in various spots around the rim to give it some dimension.
Tip:  Using the same size board as the rim helped keep the hat's rim perfectly round and not get twisted or stretched out of shape.

Once the ganache was set and dry, I used the same technique as on the previous cake by using a ball tool to swirl the pattern all over the hat.  Used piping gel to attach the rim to the cake board then placed the cake over that.  The cake was very tall (7") and not very stable so I hammered a dowel right down the center and into the cake board (you can see the cake bulging at the bottom).  I rolled a piece of modeling chocolate and wrapped it around the bottom (around 1/2" tall and 1/4" thick) to give it some extra support.

Making the board was tedious but well worth it.  I was trying to come up with something in the movie and fell in love with the checkered board and had always wanted to make one.  I used a diamond impression mat to cut out the squares and then patched up the pattern directly on the cake board.  Another reason to use a diamond impression mat and to also get perfectly uniform and perfect squares....worked like a charm!

The entire hat and rim was dusted with patches of Dark Chocolate Brown Petal Dust and Avocado Luster Dust.  The little trinkets were dusted with gold, pink, and white pearl dust and the modeling chocolate ribbon was dusted in pink pearl dust and painted with white gel colors.  The stick holding the date is a skewer while the other 2 sticks (black and white) were dried pieces of spaghetti painted with gel colors.  The feather was made out of fondant and dusted in various colors.

I used the Alice In Wonderland font for the name and age.  And made 2 dozen assorted "Eat Me" Petits Fours to go with the Hat Cake.

The "Eat Me" Petits Fours were cut from a Vanilla Sour Cream Cake baked in 10" square pan = 24 pieces each 2.25"L x 1.5"W x 1.75"H.  They were filled with Strawberry Buttercream then covered in MMF.  Royal Icing was used to pipe the white swirls and "Eat Me".

My other Mad Hatter Hat Cakes:

my first Mad Hatter Cake

My third Mad Hatter Cake