Sunday, April 26, 2009

Vegas Sign Cake

My aunt asked me to make this one. One of her coworkers was getting married in Las Vegas and so she and other coworkers threw a party for her before she left. Her idea was to make a cake to look like the "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign.


To start with, I found a nice high resolution photo of the real sign and had a friend print it out on 11x17 paper. This was to be my template for the sign and the lettering. I started out with two 12x18 cakes. I used buttercream between the layers and carved it to scale based on the template.


Then I covered it with yellow fondant followed by a piece of white fondant that I cut to size. To do the lettering, I used that printed template from earlier. I used a peice of parchment paper as tracing paper. I traced the outlines of each letter. Then I rolled out some colored fondant and, using a sharp and pointed shaping tool, I traced over the outlines from the parchment paper placed over the fondant. This gave me a slight impression on the fondant that I used to cut out each letter. I ended up with this:


For the "Welcome" part, I baked some sugar cookies. I made the whole wheat sugar cookies because I was out of regular flour. I iced them with royal icing and then added the "Welcome" letters. For the cookies near the outside, there is some floral wire holding them up. For the lights surrounding the sign, I colored some buttercream to match the yellow fondant and, using a small star tip, I put a dab at 1-inch intervals around the sign. Then I put a silver dragee on to each star tipped dab. Here are some photos of the final cake:


10 comments:

  1. Love it. The best one i have seen online. Was wondering how much does it serve? About 60?

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  2. With the pans I used, according to Wilton's web site, it could serve 72. However, I cut off the corners of the cake to get the shape. So I would guesst that this cake could serve about 45.

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  3. Tracy; I love this!! It's awesome. You did such a great job. I'm really jealous. Did I tell you before I got sick, I made some fabulous cupcakes!

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  4. I LOVE this cake and really want to try make this for my 30th birthday. Only problem I have is I don't bake ha ha is there any chance you could e mail me the ingredients and method you used? Please, Mary

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  5. Mary, it's just Duncan Hines cake mix and premade fondant from Satin Ice.

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  6. Thank you for being SO generous with the step-by-step. How big in diameter were the sugar cookies?

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  7. Karen, I just used a biscuit cutter to cut out the cookies. I don't exactly remember the diameter. If I were to guess, I would say 1.5" Maybe 2".

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  8. Tracy
    Just love how your cake turned out! can you explain how the floral wire is holding up the end cookies? I'm confused on that one? Again GREAT cake!

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  9. Beth,
    I bent the floral wire into a U shape and then bent the U into at a right angle to the U, making a little sort of table or maybe a tongue shape. The cookies just sat on that. I think I used a touch of royal icing to mildy glue them into place.

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