Vanilla Cake... and my biggest fondant cake to date!!

Vanilla cake has been my hardest thing to make.  I think I have been searching for that perfect Vanilla cake for over a year now.  Every time I make one, I try a new recipe.  And...drum roll please...I've finally found my final vanilla cake:)  Yeah me.

I really did love the vanilla cake recipe in Buddy's book... but, realistically, it was a lot of extra work and the cost to make it wouldn't have proven cost efficient for selling.  He adds vanilla pastry cream to the batter...which makes is super moist... but it's an extra day, and extra thing to make, and extra $$.  I did make it for the strawberry/whipped cream cake I sold a few weeks back:

You can make the cake without the pastry cream but I didn't think it was as good... so I went back to the drawing board.  I finally made one that came out of a magazine (with a few tweaks to make it my own) and came up with a winner!!

I used that cake for my HUGE 1/2 sheet fondant covered (filled) cake and it worked out beautifully!!  I was moist but at the same time, held it's shape for slicing, filling and decorating.

Now, about that really big cake... Wow... that was a lot of time and effort... and I probably only made about $2/hour making it... but, it was a learning experience.  And learning experiences are completely priceless for me right now!!

I made the fondant characters ahead of time:

I put the cake in the freezer to make it easier to slice down the middle.  This was probably the most stressful process for me.  I really do hate slicing big cakes down the middle...I haven't quite mastered this and I don't have a knife long enough to go all the way through... but I did it.  I also created a well in the lower level for the filling and created a barrier around the outside with buttercream to make sure it didn't run out:

And than came the next stressful factor...rolling out fondant big enough to cover this sucker!!  I had to do it on the countertop b/c I didn't have a big enough mat.  Someone gave me advice that I wish I acted upon sooner but didn't have a chance to buy...will be looking out for it so I will be more prepared for this part.  Use the vinyl table cloth stuff...and than you can just pick it up and gently unroll vinyl while laying fondant on cake.  Yup...that would have made it easier.  Because, did you know that if you fold fondant it will leave a crease that doesn't smooth out once on the cake??  Well, now you do and so do I...lol.

All in all, I think it came out great...for being so new to the fondant world.  Yes, there was a crease...but, the ends (where the fondant ends) came out much better than the communion cake I did for my daughter.

Here is the final outcome:

Oh, and I used Royal Icing for the outlines and letters.  Blue buttercream along the base.