Advice on icing birthday cake

[Wigeon]

So, the most important moment of my life has arrived: I need to make a cake for my PFB's 1st birthday. We are having a big afternoon party for DH and my 30ths and her 1st (don't tell me that big parties are no good for 1 year olds, too late now...).

I reckon that DD won't notice what the cake is like, so I'm trying to go for a mix of adult sophistication with childish tones. There is a smarties theme because the party invitations had smarties on them.

I really like the idea of copying this one, and it looks like it uses that fondant icing you buy and roll out. Is that right? How do you get chocolate fondant icing? Do you add cocoa, or can you buy chocolate fondant icing? I think buttercream would just be a bit messy looking. Is there another way of having nice smooth (maybe even shiny) icing? I am a pretty competent cook but haven't done any kind of sophisticated cake bakery.

Thanks a lot!

They're on there now. They were done with a proper quilting cutter set but you could just as easily use squares or rectangles.

The butterfly and flowere shapes were cut out of the background piece then I used the same cutter to cut out one in the opposite colour and stuck it into the hole. It looks more quilt like if you do it that way but you could also cut out a letter/shape and stick it on the top without insetting it.