Easy, breezy, beautiful... MAC cake!

This post is over a month late, but it's terribly difficult to keep up without a laptop! Any-who, a friend of mine recently had a birthday and of course I wanted to make a cake! She had quite the makeup obsession, so I thought it would be a good time to try more fondant work! The cake itself was a pretty basic chocolate cake with chocolate mousse filling, but I did sneak a little surprise in the center! The big task was the decoration. I chose a MAC makeup theme, so I decided to cover the cake with a shiny mirror glaze for a nice, clean look. Making the glaze itself was actually simpler than I anticipated, it was the application that's a bit tricky. I used a fluffy chocolate mousse for a base frosting, so the mirror glaze couldn't be too warm when I put it on or the mousse would just melt. However, you still have to pour the glaze on before it cools too much or the gelatin will set. Because of that, the mousse didn't stay perfectly smooth when I began to pour/spread the glaze. In retrospect, a buttercream would definitely be a better base for mirror glaze. Aside from that, the mirror glaze smooths quite easily over the cake and gives it beautifully clean lines! After it set, I tossed a little bit of silver lustre dust on it for extra glam. The final touch was the fondant makeup and logo! I don't have specific fondant tools yet, so I made do with a paring knife and biscuit cutter to cut out the basic shapes. The logo was the difficult part! I printed it out on regular paper, cut it out and put it on top of rolled out fondant. Unfortunately my knife wasn't sharp enough and I didn't get the clean lines I was hoping for. I also should have put the logo on while it was still pliable, instead of after it dried (it broke in a few spots). After adding a little more lustre dust (and a few toothpicks to keep things upright), it actually all came together quite nicely! I'll definitely be looking for more excuses to do mirror glazes and fondant work! ​