Cole's Birthday Present Cake

When I asked Cole what kind of cake he wanted for his 26th birthday this year, he slowly-but-surely started drafting up his dream cake:

He left the rest of the design choices up to me. Of course, I decided to use his personal design -- the faux bois and baby blue that he uses in his business card/brand identity for Cole Stipovich Design.

Since the cake was his birthday present, I tried to make it look like one with my first attempt at a Fondant Bow.   I tried following these instructions, but I only had about 15 minutes to get it done and I was using fondant, which doesn't hold it's shape like gum paste, so there is certainly room for improvement.

We brought the cake to Cole's Birthday Dinner at Nanu and Chief's [new] place.  Check out Nanu's pretty real bois table.

Faux.  Bois. That's just fun to say.

Oscar drew pictures of cake.  He also sang Happy Birthday in Italian.  He brought his A-game to Cole's Birthday Party.

Since Oscar was singing in Italian, we all chipped in with our language of choice.  It was quite the choir.  I don't know exactly what is going on in this picture, but I like it.

I wonder what Cole wished for.  Perhaps a week's worth of cake?   (Side note:  Being a kid that gets pumped about his birthday party MONTHS in advanced, I think Oscar did pretty well letting Cole have his day....but this picture just happened to catch Oscar at the hardest part.)

The inside of the cake:  Whipped Cream and Fresh Raspberries sandwiched between a Lemony Chiffon Cake.  On the inner layers of the cake there is a thin coating of white chocolate on the bottom layer and a raspberry-lemon curd spread on the upper layer.  Then the whole cake is covered in white icing and marshmallow fondant.  It was sugar coma for all of us after a big ol' rib dinner, but I swear I think this cake got better the next day.   Which was good, because we had enough left over that everyone got to go home with a big old chunk of cake.

Appy Irthday, Ole!