My Little Pony

This cake creation was for Lalo's 6th birthday...I can't believe she is already six!!! This year we gave her the choice of a birthday party with her friends or going somewhere special as a family. She chose going somewhere special for her birthday, but threw in a few requests. She wanted to bring along her best friend when we had our family outing, and she wanted me to make her a "huge cake" like her brother's 2nd birthday cake...LOL. Once she divulged her interest in a My Little Pony cake, I started researching what I wanted to do.

First, she requested that the toppers be actual toys that she could play with after the cake was gone. So, I found a set of My Little Pony cake toppers that worked perfectly! We found them at ToysRUs, and had to drive an hour away to pick them up (long story), but I also saw them for sale on websites like Amazon.com. I hope to continue to create fun kid-themed cakes even when my own children outgrow them, so these toppers will be great to save for other cakes :)

Prior to Lalo telling me that she wanted toy figurines, I did a little search for photos fondant characters that might help me make my own. Here are a few links you might want to check out if you would rather make your own ponies:

Fata di Zucchero - The website is not in the English language, but the ponies are magnificent!
Sandra's Cakes - I couldn't find her real website, if she has one, but she has an album on Flickr.
Personalised Cakes.com.au - Lalo LOVES Twilight Sparkle; this one is awesome!
KrazyKoolCakeDesigns - This is her Etsy site. Just look at some of the amazing fondant characters!
Yummers.ca - These are some pretty impressive fondant figures too!

If we had enjoyed a party with friends, I had also considered cupcakes! Here are some great links for My Little Pony cupcakes:

Rosanna Pansino - A Youtube video on how to make the cupcakes. I love the idea of having a pony on one cupcake and the corresponding "cutie mark" on another cupcake! She also uses the same figurines :)
Zoey Cakes - This is her Facebook page...linking to the My Little Pony cupcake photos. Very talented! So much detail!
SugarBug - This is a Flickr link. I love the little "cutie marks"!

I knew that Lalo was thinking "big" like Bubby's 2nd birthday cake, so I had pretty much decided to keep the same cake layout for her cake. (We also decided we would need help eating it, so we agreed to do a tiny get together with immediate family.) I wanted to approach Lalo's cake a little differently though, so I did a little research and got most of my ideas from these links:

Sugar Tart Crafts - This is where the bulk of my inspiration came from. I love the rainbow going from one cake to the other! I also like the idea of having flying ponies in the "sky", which would mean covering the taller cake with sky blue fondant. Ponies drink water too (LOL), so I really liked the idea of having a river flowing across one of the cakes. Plus, the grassy areas with flowers were a plus for me here too. I took a LOT of elements from this cake. I totally missed the part of her blog that teaches how to make the fluffy cloud icing, so mine is definitely lacking in that department! Toni has a TON of great ideas on her blog for making a My Little Pony cake, so you should definitely check it out!

Gitstr - This is a Youtube video on how to make a rainbow. I like this video because it shows the use of a bowl for shaping the rainbow, plus the pieces of the rainbow are rounded like solid tubes.


A few other things about the rainbow. One thing I think the video left out was to make sure you grease the edge of the bowl first, or else your fondant will stick (especially if you use a glass bowl like I did...live and learn). Note too that it is important to allow the rainbow to dry for a long period of time (like probably 3-5 days, at least) before expecting it to stand up properly. As you can probably see in the photo, I did NOT do that...LOL. I made the rainbow way too tall and only allowed it to dry for one day. It was measured to fit the cake properly, but it was so tall and still not dry so it kept leaning even with support. My support was a piece of cake board cut into the shape of the rainbow. To fix my problem, I ended up cutting some of the rainbow off of the ends (shortening the rainbow), then sticking the remaining cake board down into the clouds and cake for added support. It stood up nicely after that, but you can still see the cake board on the back of the rainbow in the photo.

I used a small flower cutter to make all of the flowers. I had initially planned to just put flowers here and
there in little spots of grass, but I got a little carried away with flowers...LOL. Flower making became somewhat of a competition between me, my husband, and my sister. After that, I felt obligated to use them all! So, I made some little flower stems out of fondant and gathered flowers around each one. By the time I was finished, it just looked like a bunch of flowers all around the bottoms of the cakes. Something else I will divulge that you might or might not notice is that I didn't make my icing thick enough, so the grass didn't quite stand up like I wanted.

I thought about making the inside of the cake rainbow, but Lalo requested chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream. I know there is chocolate flavoring, but with the time I had allowed for this cake, I wouldn't have had time to learn how to use it.

Looking back on the cake, I wish I had used less flowers. I also wish I had noticed Tori's fluffy cloud icing recipe so that I could have made a few more clouds on the "sky" cake and made better "splashes" at the bottom of the waterfall. I probably would have done something to make the water look more like water as well.

Every cake I create seems to have some kind of challenge. I've learned to go into each cake "project" with that understanding so that there are no surprises! Overall, this cake turned out pretty well...Lalo got her "big" cake!

PS Yes, that is a little frog on a lily pad in the middle of the "pool" :)



Shared with: