Jaxon's Strawberry Carrot Cake

6/11/2025

Introduction, Back Story & Game Plan

Hey there!
So happy you are here!
If you are new here this is my son Jaxon who just turned 15 and for the past mmm 7 or so years he's been challenging me with new cake ideas and designs for his birthday.
I am always excited to see what he will come up with!
This year he decided he wanted a cake shaped like a Strawberry.
His birthday theme was "Dance Gavin Dance" and Strawberries are a main theme throughout their music.
Just to give it a fun twist he decided he wanted the cake flavor to be...
Carrot Cake.
So. Here we go. Let's dive into this Strawberry sculpted Carrot Cake.

Reference Berries

Usually when I do my cookies I create a sketch so I have references to go on. This time I had some strawberries on hand and what is better reference than the real thing?
Plus it was a good reminder that strawberries aren't perfect shapes so I did have a little leeway with creating the Strawberry shape.

Baking the Cakes

I made 3 6 inch cakes.
They came out BEAUTIFULLY!!
Jaxon requested Carrot Cake and there are about a thousand recipes so I asked him what he wanted in it and he wanted it with just carrots... nothing else.. no nuts or raisins or whatever, there's a million versions...
This is one is just a simple carrot cake with shredded carrots.
And yes I hand shredded the carrots as is recommended.
I used a recipe from the internet somewhere.

So I baked the cakes.
I cut the tops off and saved the scraps to use for sculpting some of the cake.
I also cut the cakes in half because they were thick enough to create some good layers.
I used 5 layers and saved one layer to use for cake sculpting.
I made a Cream Cheese/Buttercream Frosting that was absolutely awesome. It wasn't too sweet it was perfect. I used some of that and the cake scraps to create some cake pop-type dough to use to sculpt some of the cake.

Crumb Coat & Construction

So funny story--- I watched ONE video on how to sculpt this cake and I decided that was the one LOL.
Seriously though, it was done with 6 inch cakes which is what I used so I didn't see the need to flood myself with more content because it just becomes extra noise that clouds up the creative process.

So this is the crumb coat.
As you can see I used the cake pop dough to create the Strawberry shape and I did also add some on top to create more of a round shape.
Once covered I put it in the freezer to harden a bit before adding another layer of frosting.

Fondant Application

{Mistakes were made}

Oh boy, here we go.
Haha this is where things almost went horribly wrong.
I did still make an oopsie but I was able to recover..

So I took the cake out of the freezer after the coat of frosting was able to harden a bit.

The day before (it's good to let the fondant rest for a day if you can) I made my normal Homemade Marshmallow Fondant because Jaxon loves it and the amount of hatred that Fondant gets leads me to believe store bought fondant is not worth putting on anything you want to eat.

So I made my fondant and it came out nicely... Red is really hard to deal with but Jaxon informed me that the strawberry on the album cover he was referring to wasn't super super red.
Either way it came out red enough in the end... I was going to paint it but Jaxon assured me that I didn't need to do that so I left it.

At this point I've taken the cake out of the freezer and I'm rolling out my fondant... after about 10 minutes I finally get the right size to cover the cake.

Leaf Application & Texture

Here's where I messed up...
I started to put the fondant on the cake...

Problems were Solved

That was a big no no... What I SHOULD have done was take the cake out and let it defrost first PAST the condensation stage.

For anyone who doesn't know, condensation is a huge problem for fondant. So I put the fondant on and within minutes it started to get sticky and sweat and I realized what happened...
Luckily I was smart enough to know that I wasn't going to get a lot more done with the fondant... however it was laid on there was how it was gonna be.
Thank goodness I actually got it covered in one peice and I didn't have any huge rips or tears.

The bonus part to it being sticky... I wasn't worried about the leaves falling off... I stuck those suckers on and they were set! And... they kind of looked amazing so... small miracles haha.

At this point, I'm having a meltdown so hubby comes to the rescue and brings me a small fan.
(He used his awesome tools to blow any dust/particles off of it and cleaned it up really good)
So I put the fan on it and it sat for hours with the fan on it...

The Next Morning

So the next morning most of the fondant had "dried" but it was brittle...
The moisture had definitely melted the fondant and the fan just hardened it.
These are all purely aesthetic issues... the fondant is totally fine...
It's marshmallows and powdered sugar so it's hard to actually ruin it I just destroyed the outer structure.

With all that being said the cake still came out pretty good and it tasted even better.
I will definitely take on another sculpted cake in the future and I will even take on basic fondant covered cakes.. I will just remember the proper order to cover it... hopefully..

And once the fondant dried the red was RED...

The Finale

Jaxon was completely happy.
He loved that it looked like a strawberry and the Carrot Cake was delicious.
If you look at the slice of cake you can see the layer of fondant was really thin so it just adds a little bit of marshmallow sweetness to the cake.
Not bad at all.
Those layers are beautiful too.