How to Make a My Little Pony Cake

When my soon-to-be 7 year old niece requested a My Little Pony cake, I was quite nervous.  I somehow managed to make a cute Olivia the Pig cake for her last year, which set the bar high.  After some online research, I settled upon this cake.

I have never worked with gum paste before.  Thankfully I decided on the cake design in advance since it takes 48-72 hours for the gum paste to harden and dry.  I followed the directions on the mix, but it still didn't turn out as well as on the YouTube videos.  I separated the pound of gum paste into six sections and dyed each section using Wilton food coloring I already had.

Next, I used the palms of my hands to roll out snakes of each food coloring.  I used a basting brush to brush water along the sides of the gum paste so they would stick together.

I molded a rainbow (just like on the blog I saw) and stuck half of a toothpick in each end.  Then I used a small star cookie cutter to cut out seven stars, in honor of the birthday girl turning seven.

The actual cake baking itself was more complex than my typical cake.  I fell in love with the rainbow idea I saw so I purchased two white cake mixes to color.  Some tips I used to make the store-bought cake mix taste better is to use eggs at room temperature, add an extra 1-2 tablespoons of oil, and freeze the cakes after baking.  All of these things make the cake more moist and easier to frost.  I dyed 2 cups of cake mix each of the colors below, and baked them on 350 degrees for 18 minutes.  Like always, I leveled each cake before frosting and stacking the layers.

After the gum paste hardened I was able to frost the cake in purple buttercream, arrange the stars along the side, and insert the rainbow into the cake.  Obviously I cheated and used a plastic Rainbow Dash from Wal-Mart instead of attempting a gum paste pony.  I was pleased with the final product.

 Thankfully, the birthday girl seemed to like the cake, too!

The best part was cutting the cake open to see the rainbow surprise.  If I were to make this cake again, I would be sure to put more red food coloring in the cake since it turned out much more pink than I would prefer.

And there you have it...a tasty, decorative My Little Pony Cake.  Yum!