Layered Cakes with Props!

I recently made a couple different layered cakes. One for my daughter's fourth birthday and one for a friend's baby shower/birthday.

My daughter requested a barbie princess cake - but I think she had no idea she was getting an actual barbie doll in the cake. This is a popular design - one that my own mother made for me growing up. Of course, Wilton has a special cake pan especially for this type of cake - I decided to make it a four layer cake for her fourth birthday. I made the cake banana bread type - with banana frosting and a yellow marshmallow fondant on top - which is nice to use for this type of cake - it has the appearance of fabric being draped over the cake - and because it's marshmallow fondant - it tastes really yummy.

The cake for my friend's baby shower/birthday was requested to be chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. And I was wondering how can I make that interesting. So, then I came up with having it look like a hot-air balloon basket. And that turned out very cute. Props are especially nice with specialty cakes. The inside layers that were cut out for the basket - made a smaller two layer cake - that went to my friend's husband to eat - he really liked having his own mini personal cake. I also made little clouds to go with the cake - to act as if the basket/balloon was in the air - those little cakes where yummy, too.