Robbie’s Inspiration – A visit to the circus via cake and a guacamole salad #cakeart #fondantart

On 25 September we had a family gathering to celebrate my parents 48th wedding anniversary. It was a lunch event and everybody contributed to the fare. I made a circus cake display and a guacamole salad. I worked on the fondant figures for the cake for about three months as they are quite time consuming and detailed to make. I made a clown, two acrobats, two empowered circus bears, a strong man, and a ring master. The cake comprised of three layers of my giant round cakes baked in my biggest wedding cake tin.

I made a double mix orange sponge, a triple mix chocolate milk sponge, and a triple mix vanilla milk sponge. All the cakes were very delicious and I took some of the leftovers to the office for my colleagues and our building management team.

Making the cake

Here is how I made the cake in a step-by-step photographic presentation:

Firstly make three giant round cakes: 2 triple cake mixtures and 1 double cake mixture

Layer one of the triple cakes with the double cake. Cover with a butter icing crumb layer

Carve the remaining triple cake. The hole is where I inserted a skewer to mark the middle.

Layer the tent roof on top of the other two layers and cover with a crumb coat

Measure the tip of the roof to the base. Cut out 6 cm wide strips from orange and white fondant and mark the middles. Cut out the fondant in top-to-toe triangles

Cut out orange and white strips for the sides of the cake. Make the bunting using green fodant and a circular cutter. Slice the circles down the middle

You will need the cakes, vanilla butter icing, a ruler, orange, green, black, and white fondant, and a little sugar glue. Oh, and a thick cake board. This cake is heavy.

I cut out an arch for the doorway from black fondant and attached it to the cake using sugar glue. The curtains are squares of green fondant, gathered to look like curtains, and glued to the sides of the door. The curtain ties are strips of green fondant attached with sugar glue.

The flag is also cut out of green fondant and attached to a skewer with sugar glue.

The characters

Clown

Strong man

Acrobat

Acrobat

Ring Master

Circus bears

The salad

I made a most delicious guacamole salad. I used Lorraine from Not Quite Nigella’s recipe here: https://www.notquitenigella.com/2022/09/07/guacamole-salad

Lorraine shares all sorts of terrific recipes for cakes, tarts, salads, and other foods.

Here is a picture of the salad:

Haunted Halloween Holiday blog tour stop

Today’s post is being sponsored by the lovely Tori Zigler, a talented poem and children’s book writer. Tori has shared her review and the origination of the book which started as a poem for a poetry challenge.

You can read Tori’s post here: https://ziglernews.blogspot.com/2022/10/wordcrafters-book-blogtour-for-haunted.html?spref=tw