March Cakes

I made two cakes in March.  One was for my sister-in-law's birthday.  She requested a hobbit cake.  She wants me to do a hobbit house for her daughter's birthday in May so she wanted something different than that.  I decided to make a book.

 The cake was a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream.  I thought about using the leftover maroon fondant from my mom's cake in February, but I decided to make green instead.  I put a strip of white fondant around the cake for the pages.  I used a fondant tool to add lines, and I used luster dust and cocoa powder to age the pages.  I added some fondant strips on the binding before I covered the whole cake in the green fondant.  I then etched in the lettering and J. R. R. Tolkien's logo.  After that, I painted the letters and the binding with a paste made from vodka and gold luster dust.  My sister-in-law really liked her cake.

The next cake was for my niece's 2nd birthday.  Her mom asked me to make a 'Melmo' cake.  So, I started by searching for inspiration.  I found the following Elmo Cake and used the same color scheme modifying my final version a little.
 

 The cake was white confetti cake with buttercream frosting then covered in yellow fondant.  I used cookie cutters for the big and little Elmos, stars and two.  The letters for the name were cut by hand.