Your Happy Baker: 3 Tier Hawaiian Themed Going Away Cake for my 4th Sister, Rachel. *UPDATED WITH MORE PHOTOS*

I have known Rachel since the moment she was born and we have spent our entire childhood growing up together. We lived next door to each other for years and my mother baby-sat her 5 days a week until she was in High School. She has been at every birthday party, holiday, graduation and even served as a bridesmaid at my wedding. To say that she is like a sister to me is an understatement...because for me, she is a member of my family and she always has been.

She is my 4th sister.

Rachel was married in March of 2010 to a super awesome guy, Dustin.
Dustin is a marine and has been serving our country since their wedding and Rachel is set to start her married life next month with Dustin...in HAWAII.

She asked me months ago, October I think if I would make her a fabulous cake for her Going Away Party...Done!

She wanted a sunset themed cake with palm trees and little beach chair toppers...Done!

I drew up this sketch for her (don't judge me, I only had highlighters at work) and she gave me her stamp of approval. She wasn't crazy about the flower so I omitted it from the cake plan. This would be my very first 3 tier cake...and I wanted it to be great.

Please oh Please be great!

I broke down the process into 10 steps:

Step 1: I ordered these adorable mini Adirondack Beach Chairs online, painted them and wrote the lovebird's names on them.

Step 2: I used a mixture of black fondant (1/4) and gumpaste (3/4) for the palm trees. I wanted to get them as dark as I could, which is why I added the bit of black fondant. I needed them to be 100% dry to stand straight and hold form so I made them 3 days in advance. Carving them took some time and patience. The morning of the party, I put a light coating of black frosting over the palm trees and them covered them in black sand sprinkles.

Step 3: Bake a whole lotta cakes! Rachel requested Vanilla cake for the bottom and largest tier, Chocolate cake for the middle tier and Red Velvet for the top tier.

Step 4: Strawberries....mmmmmm....Strawberries. My sister, Amiable came over to help me dice 4 baskets of Strawberries and then mix them with a small amount of strawberry glaze. All the cakes had this as it's filling.

Step 5: Stack 'em up. The Vanilla and Chocolate tiers were frosted with Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream and the Red Velvet was frosted with Cream Cheese Frosting.

Step 6: Once all the tiers had chilled and set in the refrigerator and I took a break for some Taco Bell, I covered each one in white Buttercream Fondant then let them chill a bit more.

Step 7: Time to paint. I pulled out my sketch and grabbed several different colors of food gel coloring. One color at a time, I added vodka to create a water-color paint consistency and painted the fondant with a regular paint brush to make sure I had the cool stroke marks to blend the colors. The dark pink was a challenge and I wasn't able to achieve the color I was looking for so that the purple blended better, but it looked decent.

Step 8: My boyfriend doesn't let me use his tools, including his sheer cutter thingy...whatever. So he cut all my dowels for me so that I could stack the cake. Once it was stacked, I used black frosting (pre-made) around the bottom of each tier. I smeared it with my finger to get in between the tiers and a bit on each tier so that my sprinkles would cover up everything. This was the last of my work at home, the rest would be done on site since I live in San Jose and the party was in Oakland. I didn't want to take any chances with the Palm Trees breaking during the drive....silly me to think it would be that simple.

Step 9: The morning of the party when I frosted and sprinkled the Palm Trees, one broke. Super bummer. I tried not to cry and told myself I could fix it once I got there. The drive went fine, no crazy bumps or breakages. I put the broken palm tree back together and attached the other....only for it to fall off 30 seconds later and break. So now I have 2 broken palm trees and a bunch of guests watching me, cool. I managed to piece the other back together as well, but the whole standing effect was no longer happening as I had to lay the trees right up against the cake so they wouldn't fall again. Sigh...

Note: I will be watermarking all my pictures from this point forward and someday when I have A LOT of time on my hands, I will watermark all my previous pictures.

Step 10: The easiest part of all....I placed the two beach chairs on top of the cake.

I bought this cake stand at the flea market for $6 months ago...and it finally got to show it's face.

Cutting this cake was an adventure, I'll have to do some research on how to do that better...but by the end of the party only a couple pieces of cake remained.