Rise and Shout

The end of April brought about the graduation of my husband from Brigham Young University. Since he is a die-hard Cougar fan, I had to make him a themed cake to that effect. Here is a shot of the outside.

As far as exterior decoration, it was pretty standard buttercream. I tinted the frosting the wrong shade though and made it more teal than Cougar blue, oops! I was busy making a Cafe Rio style dinner  at the same time as making this cake and the evening was late by the time I finished.

But the inside of the cake was rather exciting. I attempted to bake Blue "Y"s into the cake. This piece wasn't the best, but you can see on the bottom layer how it showed up. There were some pieces that looked better than others. I baked a 9x13 cake colored BYU blue. After it was cooled and then frozen, I used a cookie cutter I had made out of a can of soda to cut out the Y shapes. Then I placed them in a circle around the bottom of the round cake pans and poured the yellow batter over them. The cutouts were a bit too tall for the cake, so the tops of them were a tad above the level of the cake. Luckily the frosting hid all that! They also moved around a bit as the cake baked, making them tilt to the side, or become misshapen. Another method I read online that could work would be to make sugar cookies in your color and shape of choice and just barely bake them until firm. Then circle them in your cake pan. This method would have probably made for a better looking end result so I'll have to try it next time!