Movie Slate Birthday Cake

A dear friend a colleague had a birthday recently. She is the executive producer of a movie review show. The host, some staff members and I conspired to surprise her at work with cake and prosecco. We managed to pull it off beautifully.

In creating the cake I wanted to make something for her that was also a theme for the whole team.  I’ve often though, how wonderful it would be if everyone could have a custom cake made every year with a theme created representing the person at that particular time in their lives. What a great photo retrospective that would be.

This movie slate custom cake was relatively easy to do mostly because I skipped the making  my own marshmallow fondant step. Instead, I used store bought chocolate fondant which I tinted black, then used white fondant (also store bought) to create the accents. 

I managed to restrain myself from disco dusting the entire cake and used luster dust on the clapper and the words Production, Director and Date. Also on the screw hinge and the star accent.

To create the slate letters I used mini alphabet cutters  and white fondant.

For the hand written letters, I fitted a pastry bag with a #4 tip and used stiff white royal icing to write the letters out on parchment paper. Once they had dried, I adhered them to the cake with light corn syrup.

Chocolate raspberry is a favorite flavor combo of the birthday girl so a chocolate cake was made in a large square pan and crumb coated with homemade chocolate raspberry buttercream. I doubled both recipes.

The star accent was added for extra decoration and also to make a special piece when the cake is cut. I thought that piece might go to the birthday girl but the host of the show claimed it.

It was so much fun to make this cake and I got such a kick out of how many people enjoyed it (it easily fed 25). Wish I could make one every week.