The Madhatter! Amanda's Basics 109 blog

Over the weekend I completed the 3rd of my 4 courses – the Madhatter. Being my 9th day straight of cake courses I was starting to feel a little caked out and slightly loopy, so the irony wasn’t lost on me, trust me. How very appropriate.




Now, madhatters scare me. Done badly they look like a total train wreck and I’ve never been brave enough to attempt one. But it was a skill I was itching to learn and no one does them better than Planet Cake.



You may look at our little 2 tiered cakes and wonder how on earth they could be harder than the Tapered Spheres and Squares cake, but let me assure you, it sits exactly where it needs to be in the Basics series level of difficulty.



Still, I was blissfully unaware of just how hard it was and I had all sorts of amazing design ideas running around in my head only to walk in on day 1 and be told very firmly that we had to stick to the set design and could only choose our colours. I couldn’t help but be a little miffed I must admit, but let me tell you – my attitude soon changed! That is one hard cake to cover!! There were screams and expletives coming from every corner of the room and we were all more than happy to be covering that bottom tier in stripes! What rips? What tears? Never happened.



Luckily I had much more success with my top tier but only practice, practice, practice will build my confidence on this one.



I went with a very bold colour scheme which came from by fascination with doing a peacock inspired cake this week (and yes, I had the Katy Perry song rolling around my head the entire time). I attempted to replicate the pattern on the tail in the balls at the base of each tier. Or as Anna Maria would say “I’m making an experiment” (in her adorable Austrian accent). Would I do a cake again in these colours? Probably not. But it was a fun experiment to make 



Having gleefully conquered that madhatter and after 10 days of caking straight, I had definitely earned a day off to rest, recover and psych myself up for the grand finale, the pinnacle, the piece de resistance of cakes – the 4 day topsy turvy.



And rest I did. My final Planet Cake course and completion of my Masters begins today and I am ready for it. Bring. It. On.