Bacardi Cake (Sheena's Cake for Robert)

Here is the first cake ever purchased. Ever. This also means that I was far too anxious and critical throughout the whole process (beware anyone who stepped into the kitchen Friday evening). Sheena wanted a Bacardi themed cake for her boyfriend Robert. Overall, it was a pretty simple theme. Execution was a little more difficult. The bottom tier was no issue; chocolate cake with butter cream icing. The upper tier was black forest and caused the majority of the issues. Cherry filling is slippery and difficult to build on and seemed to have declared me its sworn enemy. The cake might have been too moist too... but I still maintain that the cherry filling was being unnecessarily antagonistic. Lastly, do you know how hard it is to make red fondant? Two pots of fondant dye later, it was a hot pink mess. Thanks to the best boyfriend in the world for making two fondant dye runs & doing the mixing. He is the very best ever. Also, he braved my psychotic rants about everything.

I tried cutting out the Bacardi bat out of fondant, but that's obviously a ridiculous idea which failed miserably. Trying to cut detailed shapes out of fondant (and not letting them dry for upwards of a day or two) will generally result is a disfigured version of what you intended. I resorted to painting the bat with "no-taste" black fondant dye. If you mix the dye with a little bit of water, you can use it much like water colours. Overall, the painted-bat was a success. It's deformed fondant-cut brother is now smooshed in the compost. Serves him right!