Graduate Cap Cake

I met someone who’s brother-in-law was graduating from college and she wanted to give him a cake to congratulate him for a job well done. She suggested a graduation cap and I agreed with her that that was a brilliant idea. Its amazing how something so simple looking could be greeted with some much warmth and love.

This is an 8 inch French Vanilla Sponge cake frosted with vanilla buttercream and covered with marshmallow fondant. The cake is sitting on a cake board covered with marshmallow fondant colored to look like wood. Tutorials on how to achieve this wooden look can be found here. I have a tutorial on how to make a cake similar to this one. That tutorial is for the Graduation Cake below and it can be found here.

The first part of the cake to be made was the square part of the cap because it needed a few days to dry properly. I initially played with the idea of covering a square cake board with fondant so as to ensure that it was sturdy. But the fondant actually worked on its own and didn’t break. Phew!

The cake itself is an 8 inch round cake which I carved to give it a rounded top. The cake was wrapped with black fondant after it was frosted and a stitching wheel was used in some areas to make it look like it was sewn.

The cake was finished with a thin purple border and tassel on top of the cap. I chose purple because that was the color of his graduation gown and cap. The fringe on the cap was achieved using the spaghetti cutter of my pasta machine. It did come out better than I had expected it to.

The cake was finished with a scroll to the right and a congratulatory note to the left. All the purple colored areas of the cake was finished with purple pearl dust to give them luster and shine.

This is a very simple cake, but the attraction is in all the detailing. Congrats Amani.