So… March 6th, Miranda and I were invited to an “Alice in Wonderland” Tea Party being held at a friend’s house along with going to see the Tim Burton movie in 3D at Channelside in downtown Tampa. I had been asked to use my imagination and come up with a cake for the party… and boy, did I ever! My first thought was to make a topsy-turvy whimsical tiered cake, but then I thought I’d try my hand at something a little harder… the Mad Hatter’s HAT!
I baked up three 9″ rounds and one 10″ round yellow cake… all 2″ tall… and filled between the layers with blueberries (the kind used in pies). I bought an electric carving knife to help sculpt out the hat shape and went to work on rolling out as much dark-chocolate fondant as my small counter space would allow.
… oh, I also whipped up @ 5 lbs. of vanilla buttercream icing to “hold” the cake together under the fondant.
One of our friends had a distaste for blueberries, so I made a small 6″ round cake with no filling for her. I did, however, flavor the icing with Creme de Menthe to accentuate the dark-chocolate fondant. Since I had my hands full with getting the hat sculpted, Miranda offered to decorate the small cake… which she did rather well for her first time at REALLY decorating a cake. She turned the small round into a pocket watch and even made some “pills” out of marzipan.
Here are a few pictures of the cake in progress and the results:
Now, the part of this story that SUCKS is that Miranda and I did not get the chance to eat any of our cakes, nor did we get to see the movie OR go to the Tea Party. 
Thanks to closed garages, full pay lots, and full valet (due to hockey and some arts festival), we drove around for an hour without finding a place to park. Miranda called the theater manager and he refunded the $30 we spent on tickets AND sent us free passes to see the movie again another day. So instead of seeing the movie and attending the Tea Party afterwards, we dropped off the cake first… drove around downtown Tampa for @ an hour looking for parking… decided to leave because we already missed the first 20 minutes or more of the movie… went to Mimi’s Cafe to have a dinner and go home.
I think we’re going to go try seeing the movie again on the 21st… we’ll see how THAT goes.
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