Sailing Around the World Cake

In my advanced cake decorating class we had to complete a project involving cake carving. We had to stick to the basic shapes..... no face sculptures or anything crazy like that... haha! I decided to carve my 6" cakes into a sphere shape and my 9" cakes into an hourglass shape. I kept the hourglass shape pretty subtle but after covering the cake in fondant it was almost un-noticeable. I guess that's why I'm in school, right? To figure these things out! I am learning new things every day. :)

We didn't have to decorate the cakes after covering them in fondant. But, I am always anxious to try something ambitious and so I designed a "Sailing Around the World" cake which turned out decent enough. The inspiration for this cake came because my husband and I have a dream to sail around the world some day. Of course our sailboat will need a decent oven or I will refuse to go... ;)

I made the sphere into a globe. I used a marbled blue fondant for the water and marbled green for the continents. Marbling the fondant was actually pretty easy! With a very short amount of time to complete the project, I ended up in a really big hurry to decorate the cake. So, instead of cutting accurate continents I just made random shapes and blobs that are similar enough to earth. haha!

The hourglass base was covered in a pale blue fondant. Then I cut wavy strips of white, light blue and dark blue fondant to layer and look like waves. Finally, I embellished a bit with the boats and the red markers on the globe to tie in the red sails.

I had so many more ideas that didn't end up on the cake because of a lack of time. But, I guess sometimes simplicity is best. Maybe someday someone will want me to make a similar cake and I can go to town then! :) Anyone? Anyone?

The finished project

NOT an accurate depiction of the interior of the Earth. haha! Chocolate and vanilla cake layers with chocolate swiss meringue buttercream filling. My 2 year old couldn't wait to cut it open!