October 2014: My daughter wanted a dance party themed birthday party. I immediately thought of a dance floor cake and sketched out the drawing above. My daughter made one of my characters into a goblin– hence the big, pointy ears.I knew my cake would need a disco ball, but the only way I could envision hanging it, would be to build a wooden structure around the cake so the disco ball could hang down. Here is a photo of my cardboard prototype.I took my prototype to a nearby Home Depot to ask for help on how to build it, as I knew I would need some sort of brackets for the angled roof. Something magical happened there, and after 15 minutes of them trying to find the right person to help me, Eddie arrived. It was soon understood that Eddie was not going to help me make the structure, but he was actually going to make it FOR me. He built it in two days complete with a paint job and silver glitter pinstriping. When I got to the store to pick up the structure, Eddie and I talked about lights, and he glued in two battery powered LED lights right then and there. Eddie’s supervisor came by to check out the structure and take a few pictures. Amazingly, they wouldn’t let me pay for anything.Here are the beginnings of my fondant dancers.This guy was modeled after John Travolta’s famous pose in Saturday Night Fever.The disco ball is made out of molded Rice Krispies Treats covered in fondant. I looked into buying silver sequins– or something I could use to mimic the reflective surface. A small jar of sequins was expensive and not exactly what I had in mind, so I decided to make my own. I found an online tutorial from Kara’s Couture Cakes and made one big gelatin sheet. Once it was dry, I hand cut the sheet into small squares.Here’s a picture of the whole cake. I also made lime green and black sequins to decorate the edges of the dance floor. I covered the cake in black fondant and then laid out the black and white fondant tiles.
A close-up of my Solid Gold dancer.John Travolta’s protogeShooting the moon!
