Ds Birthday Cake - help for a baking novice!

[RibenaMonsoon]

Ok, its DS 1st birthday in October and nafurally im planning the party and getting very excited.

I have decided to make his cake myself and im really excited about that. Trouble is....i cant bake for love nor money!

Its going to be a Paw Patrol theme cake. Ive always been bery good at arty type things so making the decorations for the cake will be easy, the rest wont.

Id like some advice on decorating materials.

The cake will be chocolate with 3 layers of cake, with a layer of white chocolate frosting in and a layer of milk chocolate frosting.

Im gonna have a white chocolate buttercream/frosting all over.

What would be best to make the decorations with? I thought of modeling icing but surely that wouldnt go with chocolate? Or would it?

Should i go with modelling chocolate? How difficult is it to use?

Any tips or advice would be very much appreciated.

[GremlinGreen]

I have the opposite problem to you - I'm good at baking but I'm not so great at decorating!
I hate fondant personally, so I make decorations out of marzipan. You probably can't get the same detail as with fondant icing though.

I expect you will find that people won't want to eat the decorations anyway - it's not very nice eating a big lump of fondant. I would just take the decorations off before serving.

Good luck!

[PETRONELLAS]

I think chocolate is difficult to work with for this theme. Moulds are good but really won't look very like the PP characters. How about using any toys you've got - put the little figures on the cake.
I've seen dog bowls/paw prints used for the other food which worked well.

[notthesortofmummyyouhopedfor]

Betty Crocker chocolate cake mix works every time and makes a generous size cake. Coat the cake with your icing mix and then cover the sides with chocolate fingers or chocolate buttons. It makes the cake look much neater and covers a multitude of sins if you aren't great at icing! Top with a big co-ordinating icing disk with small toys/home made characters and cut out icing letters for the name. Looks like it took lots of effort but quite simple to do. Good luck and hope you have a lovely party 😁

[Flowersinyourhair]

I'm rubbish but I always make my kids birthday cakes as I go all gooey about the whole tradition thing...
Anyhoo, my cheaty way is to bake the cake and cover in fondant icing which immediate makes it a smooth and professional looking cake, then put your fondant models on top you can even buy these if you can't model them
I also cover the cake board in fondant icing as that's what the professionals do and I put ribbon around the bottom as it covers up all the cock ups with the icing
I've done some really nice looking cakes that people have been really complimentary about despite my inability to bake!