Hats Off to Cake!!!

Ryan's 30th Sombrero Birthday Cake Challenge: Accepted.

Whip up a WHITE CAKE for a 16" round cake pan. You'll need to make 2 of these. One will be cut and sculpted into the top part of the hat. 

If you want to make a TIE DYE cake (which is both super simple and very impressive)  then you will divide batter into separate bowls....

Now add food colour to each one. I scoop some of the red and yellow  to make orange. And then red and blue for the purple. Yellow and blue for green. I left one plain white. THEN all you have to do is pour each colour into pan, straight into the middle, one colour atop another.

Since you will need to make TWO round 16" cakes, if you have 2 pans, great, if not, you have some baking time, and serious cooling time ahead. DO NOT REMOVE the cake until it has completely cooled and YOU MUST grease (use shortening) and flour the pan. With a cake that size it needs to slide right out. AND that's what that cookie sheet is for. Place it over the top of the cake in its pan and turn out cake onto cookie sheet. Use the cooling time to make a large amount of buttercream frosting. I use half shortening and half butter.  Cover with damp cloth and put in fridge until ready to use.

Once you have the first cake out, cut it into 4 pieces and stack 3. Cut the last piece in half diagonally and add to stack. Use a sharp knife to "carve" and angle and shape the top part of the hat. Then smear some frosting on the bottom of cake plate, glue that huge sucker down! Flip the cake plate over the flat (if not flat, shave cake top first) cake, and use the cookie sheet to flip cake out. "Glue" all your stacks together with smears of icing and stack onto bottom cake.

Now a chop stick goes through the middle to keep everything together during icing. Apply the "crumb layer" of icing.
Let dry, meanwhile, take rest of icing and colour it yellow (or whatever base colour for the hat you want.) Eat a sandwich while second layer of icing sets.

Once dry to the touch, take a paper towel to both smooth and give a straw hat-like texture..... just place on cake and use your hand to smooth it out.

And get to icing it! Freehanded and childish! Who cares?! Its a cake!

I used the star tip to do the little red and black blarps around the cake.

Remember to take the chop stick out after transportation is successful. Stick, oh I dunno, like a beer can candle on top to cover the little spot where is was.... Someone took the beercan candle so use the old brain grapes to imagine that glory.