Clothesline Cake

by Kelsey Price
(South Carolina)

This clothesline cake consisted of an 8 inch tier and a 12 inch. They were both two cakes torted into four layers. The easiest way to tort and trim your cakes is with a wire torter. Wilton makes a decent one.

After the cakes are torted, you need to fill your layers. Start by piping a dam. Put your first layer on your turntable, and fill a large gallon ziplock bag with buttercream. Cut a hole in the corner to create a makeshift piping bag. This way is the best to do it as you will be piping out large quantities of icing.

Go around the perimeter of your cake with the icing. Then fill the circle with either more buttercream, pudding, mousse, jam, or other filling. Smooth. Add another layer of cake and continue until complete. Then crumb coat by smoothing the exterior of your cake with buttercream. Allow to chill fully.

Next, cover your cakes with fondant. Knead fondant until pliable. Then roll out to 1/4 of an inch, drape over cake and smooth with fondant smoothers. Trim extra. Measure and add dowels into bottom tier, add buttercream, and stack cake. Put in the fridge.

Take out gumpaste (store bought) and roll thinly. Cut out strips of equal length, fold in half, and put onside to dry. Then assemble and gum glue together to form bow.

Find pattern online or freehand baby clothing items (I used a cricut cutout as a guide). Mine were about 3 inches. Roll out gumpaste or fondant thinly and put in fridge to harden. After about 10 minutes, it should be firm enough to cut shapes out without warping.

Cut out clothing items and put on a flat surface to dry. While they are drying you can mix up your paint. Start with a clear alcohol such as vodka and add enough gel food coloring to reach desired color. Do not use water in this process as it does not dry fast enough and it will make your gumpaste/fondant soggy.

I hand painted each onesie a solid color, then added details. Let dry. In the morning, you can use a q-tip to put polka dots with food coloring paint onto the clothesline cake.

Then pipe out clothing lines, and add onesies to cake with gum glue. Add a complimenting ribbon around the cake.