When you take a pan and make it into another cake design - Do you cut the raised parts off, and just leave the outline of the pan? I was thinking that if I did that, then I would have a lot of cut area and a shorter cake. If I don't do that, how do I disguise the underlying design?
Thank you, thank you, thank you....

I would not cut off any cake. Just crumb coat and then your final frosting. Once you put your final frosting coat on you won't be able to see the outline of the underlying design.

Good luck!

Thank you for the quick reply. I will try without cutting.

I use character pans all the time and I have yet to make a cake of the character the pan is meant for. I don't usually cut off anything as frosting is very forgiving and adaptable to change the look of the cake. When I do cut off it is because I want the shape of the pan to do a 3-D effect and what I do is then level both sides.