Homer Simpson Donut Birthday Cake

For Mr B's Birthday this year I decided to make a Homer Simpson Donut Cake.

Basically I wanted to make a giant donut, with Homer Simpson jumping out of the middle.

Slightly ambitious when I have only used fondant once before, but if I managed to pull it off, totally worth it.

So I turned to the internet to try and find some sort of tutorial on how to make Homer. I only managed to find two and one of them didn't really look like Homer Simpson and the other one I couldn't follow.

It was not off to a positive start.

In the end I decided to get started a few weeks in advance to give myself enough time to make the fondant, practise my modelling skills and come up with a finished product that I was happy with. As you can see from the photo below, I used a magnet off our fridge to guide me as far as proportions went.....

It took me about 4 hours of work to get a Homer that I was happy with, which probably shows how poor my fondant skills are but I was really happy with the results and I'm learning so time is not an issue.

I brought a round donut shaped cake tin for $7 at Big W and usedthis mud cake recipewhich I discovered whilst making the cake for the blog's 3rd birthday earlier in the year.

I made 2 cakes and sandwiched them together with Raspberry M&M Buttercream.

To make the buttercream, I placed 1 cup of Raspberry M&M's in the blender and processed until they were powder. Then I made my favourite vanilla buttercream frosting (beat 125g butter until pale and creamy, add 1.5 cups icing sugar, 1 tspn vanilla essence and 2 tbspns milk and beat until fluffy) and added the processed M&M's to that. Believe me when I say this frosting is amazing!

I then shaped the cake to look more like a donut before covering it in dark chocolate ganache(also the same one I used making the blog's 3rd birthday cake)and placing it in the fridge overnight. To be honest I placed mine in the fridge for 4 days prior to covering it in the fondant and when we finally cut it last night (10 days after I made the cake and 5 days after I covered it in fondant) it was still amazingly moist and delicious.

To save time, I had already divided my fondant and dyed it the pink and the brown colours I needed for the donut. I used Wilton dye for the pink and a little bit of cocoa for the brown. My aim was that the night before Mr B's birthday I would 'simply' have to put it all together.....

Then I topped the whole thing off with some sprinkles and voilà!

He is just so cute and adorable and Mr B really loved it which makes all the time I put into the cake totally worth it.

Although I feel I should mention that it's now 5 days after Mr B's birthday and we were finally allowed to cut the cake and try some.....even if Homer was suspiciously missing from the top. I think all my threatening to bite his head off may have lead to him being placed in witness protection.....

Oh well, he really was too cute to eat anyway!

Mrs B xx