May your home always be too small to hold all your friends...

An old Irish Blessing that has meant so much to our family has been, "May your home always be too small to hold all your friends."  It's a wish and a prayer for someone to have so many friends in their life that they can't fit all of them in their home at once.  To have many close friends that would do anything to help you out is a true blessing.

One of those friends of ours threw a St. Patrick's Day party.  We threw some ideas around and came up with this cake...

I started with three cakes... yes, I said three!  I baked one devil's food cake and two marble cakes.  To the marbled cake I added green coloring to in order to keep with the spirit of the cake. What can I say, I love details.

I layered these cakes with green (of course!) buttercream icing and stacked them.  Next, I covered the cake board and stacked cakes with green fondant.  I used black fondant to create the band around the smokestack and a gold buckle in the front.  I painted gold luster dust on the buckle to make it shimmer.  I used excess fondant to create a four-leaf clover/shamrock tucked into the band.

I completed the concept with a pot of gold on top of the hat, because what's a leprechaun without some gold.  I used more of the black fondant to create a cauldron, which I filled with gold chocolate coins.  To a certain little someone, this was one of her favorite parts of the cake -- lol!  But, I just couldn't stop there!  I took Duff's wire curly-cues to give the effect of gold bursting out of the pot.  I flattened gold fondant "coins" on the ends of the wires and painted them with more of the gold luster dust.

 I have to say, I'm pretty happy with the end result.  There are always things I feel I need to work on, but overall I'm impressed with the skills I have considering I've never had any formal training. Oh, well!  A special thank you to Colleen and Scott for letting me make them a cake to show-off.  ; )  Thank you again for sharing your home with us -- We had a great time!  Here's to a job well done.  Sláinte!