Unicorn Cake

Why weren't these a thing when I was a teenager?  I was obsessed with unicorns.  Posters, stickers, and even a sculpted glass unicorn on a geode fragment.  Not sure what happened to that.  I still use the unicorn keychain I got for my 16th birthday.  Anyway, I was determined to make myself a Unicorn Cake for my birthday this year.

There are dozens of YouTube videos for every trendy cake, but I think this has twice as many as most.  One of my co-workers said he saw one at a shop for over $100.  I found one online near me that was $85 for the size I made, with a buttercream coat instead of fondant and a less intricate mane.  Forget that, they're not that hard to make.  They're mainly time-consuming.  It takes a day for the fondant ears and horn to dry so they can be painted, but actually making them was about ten minutes.  You have to make several colors of icing and get a few bags and tips dirty.  Aside from that, it's just fill, crumb coat, and either top in buttercream or drape in white fondant.  You don't have to know how to make buttercream flowers, although if you do they would look great.  All the extra bling was leftover crushed rock candy from the geode cake and some pearl sprinkles.

I did stress about the eyes.  I didn't want to buy eight ounces of black fondant to use a teaspoon.  You can do them in gold, but black makes a striking contrast against the pastel and gold you've already used.  Then one of the videos used black gel icing from the tube.  Perfect.  However you choose to do the eyes, in whatever shape, just make sure to draw them on the cake first.  This is black.  You only get one shot at it.  It isn't that hard to get a toothpick and make yourself a stencil to paint over.  Practice on a vertical sheet of paper.

Needed
3 or 4 layers of round cake.  Taller looks better.  With filling, my 6" diameter 3-layer cake was 5" high.
*24 oz box of white fondant (more if it's a huge cake)
gel food coloring
Spray metallic color or luster dust
sprinkles or edible glitter in coordinating colors for bling
toothpicks and a wood skewer or cake pop stick
buttercream or swiss meringue buttercream frosting
Black piping gel or a small amount of black fondant

Day 1

1.  Bake cake.  It will be easier to do the rest of the project if the cake is cooled, then frozen overnight.

2.  Make ears and horn

Horn:  Pull off a few ounces of fondant.  Roll into a rope that is very thin in the middle.  Fold in half and twist into the horn, cutting off the bottom where you want it to end.  Mine was about 4", and the length should be determined by the diameter and height of your cake, as should the width at the base.  Impale with the skewer, which will be used to support it when placed on the cake.  Place in styrofoam or a cake pop holder to dry, with about 4" of stick protruding from the bottom.  It won't get dented as easily if it hardens for at least 24 hours.

Ears:  Use either two heart-shaped cutters or two round cutters, one smaller than the other.  For the rounds, roll out some of the remaining fondant thinly on a cornstarched surface.  Cut a circle, then offset the cutter to make a leaflike shape.  Make two of those.  Knead pink food coloring into scraps and roll out again.  Cut two smaller leaves to be the middles of the ears using the same process.  Dampen pieces and press together with a toothpick inbetween.  Pinch bottoms together to make an ear shape and stick in the styrofoam to dry.  For heart cutters, roll and cut out, layer, and pinch into ear shape.

Day 2

1.  Trim cakes flat.  Place bottom layer on a cardboard cake circle to make it easier to move later.  Fill as desired, crumb coat with a white or cream cheese icing, and chill.  If the cake is a color other than white, add a second coat to make sure no dark or bright colors come through.  Try to do a good, smooth job, but you're coating this with fondant and a billion swirls of frosting.  As long as a 1/3 wedge of it is "perfect", you can call it a job well done.

2.  To finish the ears and horn, spray (or paint with a brush) horn with gold or silver metallic food color.  Allow to dry for half an hour, then repeat.  I got the color I wanted in two coats.  If you spray over a plate, you can use some of the gold to paint a thin layer of glitter onto the inside of the ear pieces.  The pink will still show through.  Allow to dry while you work on the cake.

3.  Roll out remaining fondant and drape onto cake.  Slowly coax fondant until cake is evenly covered.  Trim base to fit and place onto serving plate if you haven't already, securing the base with a dollop of icing.  You can no longer freeze the cake because of the fondant, but refrigerator is fine.

White: A blank page or canvas.  So many possibilities
~ Sunday in the Park with George

4.  Make a half-batch of buttercream or SMB and divide into a bowl for each color you want to use.  I intentionally did not mix mine perfectly, to get a highlighting effect.  You can go either pastel or saturated.  Keep in mind that bright colored frosting will not be as firm and may lose its shape in warm weather.  Select tips and fill bags.  I used an M1 rosette for the lavender, 4B for the pink starbursts, and plain round 12 for the yellow drops.

5.  Decide what part of the frosting/fondant job is the best and call that the face and uncovered side.  Everything else is going to get decorated.  Start with your largest star tip and make staggered swirl rosettes.  Fill in with the next largest in another color and design, and finally fill in any gaps with a small star or plain round drops.  You want a widow's peak at the front, then a cascading mane down one or both sides and the back.  All this decoration frosting is why you went skimpy on the undercoat.

6.  Figure out where you want your eyes, roughly halfway up the cake and 20º-30º apart, the width of one slice.  There are templates and suggestions all over the internet for designs.  I used the typical closed smile eye with a couple of outside eyelashes.  A downward curve is more of a bashful look.  Either make fondant eyes, which are fragile but easy to remake if you don't like them, or pipe on directly with piping gel.  I made a stencil on paper with the small round cookie cutter I used on the ears, then traced it with a toothpick on the fondant, flipping it over for the mirror image other eye.  One was better than the other.

7.  Place your horn and ears.  The horn goes in the forward third of the top of the cake, between the eyes.  The ears go about the diameter line, halfway to the middle, and curved slightly toward the horn for a perky expression. Turn out for a more relaxed look.  Once you set them into the buttercream, the bases will disappear and no one can see the sticks.

8.  Bling it up.  Sparkle sprinkles, candy pearls, painted on fairies, candy butterflies, you name it.

Difficulty rating :-0