Hawaiian Luau Cake

I had a blast doing this cake. It was my neice, Faith's 12th birthday. My parents, Faith and myself had a HUGELY anticipated trip to Hawaii planned in June and her birthday fell on our first full day there. We celebrated her birthday at home the weekend before our trip with what??? A Luau of course. We had to get geared up for island life.

I put a Tiki Hut on top of the cake, the top tier had "Happy Birthday Faith" written on it in Hawaiian....of course :)....and the bottom tier was a tiki face.

For the topper I wanted to use rice krispy treats as the structure for the base of the hut...however I don't have the time, energy or patience required to make an entire batch of treats for a 3.5" by 3" square. So I took a short cut that I will take again in the future whenever possible...I used the premade treats that come in little squares, individually wrapped. For the shape I was going for they worked like a dream. I put four of them together with white chocolate in between each one to make them stick together and then covered the outside with the white chocolate also.

After that I used a bamboo mold and fondant to cover the base of the hut, stuck each piece on and dusted the whole thing with petal dust until it looked right to me.

For the top of the hut I used wood skewers and Styrofoam to hold it all up...then textured and placed the fondant on the Styrofoam using piping gel to make it adhere. Then dusted on color again.

I just placed the tiki face on piece by piece. I had high hopes for him and he didn't turn out quite how I wanted him to, but he was still pretty cool. I also made gumpaste flowers for the first time...the hibiscus shown were the second set that I made because I broke my first two. I also threw in a couple of pineapples, a drink in a coconut and a surfboard.