How to Make a Batman Logo Cake

Jackson requested yet another Batman cake for his birthday this year. I wasn't in a cake decorating mood and planned to purchase one at the WalMart bakery. After waiting 'til the last minute, the WalMart bakery was closed and I ended up scrambling to make a cake late at night. 

Lettering is a weakness of mine, so I bought premade sugar letters. Since the colors didn't match with the Batman theme I dyed them yellow using piping gel and yellow dye. (I would have just used diluted gel food coloring if I had any.)

I printed this Batman logo to use as the main decoration. It was the perfect size for a standard sheet cake, but would not have fit well on a round cake. I chose to make candy clay rather than fondant for two reasons:
1. I prefer the taste of candy clay.
2. I could buy a bag of yellow and chocolate candy melts for $3 and not have to worry about coloring the fondant.

Candy clay is extremely quick and easy to make. It only requires two ingredients--a bag of candy melts and 1/4 cup of light corn syrup. It takes two minutes to melt the bag of candy melts in the microwave. Once they are melted, add the corn syrup and quickly stir before it hardens. For some reason, my candy clay turned out especially greasy and I had to use a washcloth to absorb the excess grease.  After kneading the clay to a smooth mixture (less than a minute) I sandwiched it between two pieces of wax paper and rolled it out flat.

I printed two copies of the template so that I could have the oval and the batman symbol separate. I used a knife to trace the oval on top of the yellow candy clay,

and did the same with the Batman symbol on the black candy clay.

Since the clay was still soft and pliable, the black and yellow pieces adhered together well. I laid them out on wax paper to harden overnight. (This step wasn't necessary since the pieces laid flat on the cake, but it would have been important if I had made 3-D figurines.)

I ended up making a double layer sheet cake because the first cake I made was too thin after I leveled it. I wrapped both cakes in plastic wrap and froze them overnight so they would be easy to frost in the morning.

The next morning I whipped up a batch of vanilla buttercream, dyed it blue, and slathered it on top of my cakes. Because the cake was cold, it didn't tear at all. I didn't have to worry about a crumb coat.

Once the cake was completely iced, I applied my Batman logo in the center, pressed the letters around it, and piped a very quick (and unintentionally sloppy) border on the top and bottom of the cake.  Voila!