weird party theme and tie-dye fondant tips

my Niece is having a big 13th bday party and has specifically requested a tiered cake designed to fit her party theme... only thing is her party theme is a bit odd... it's CUPCAKES. More specifically, the party theme is 'Baked by Melissa', which, for those of you who may not know, is a popular mini cupcake store/chain, who's logo is a mini tie-dyed cupcake.

Unfortunately my niece is not interested in just having a big cupcake-shaped cake, NOR a tower of cupcakes instead of a cake. SOOOO this leaves me with having to come up with a cake design based on a cupcake shop, which also must feature tie dye... hmmm (that's me scratching my head).

any thoughts? ideas? designs? Also, if anyone can share best practices for getting that tie-dye look (without air brushing, since I still haven't ever done that yet) I'd love to hear them!

Lastly, since I'm considering using the giant cupcake for the top tier of the cake, was wondering if there's a way to do a tie-dye 'liner' using the melted chocolate method (using white chocolate and food coloring to create the shell for the base). Is that possible you think, or should I stick with marbled/tie-dyed fondant for the 'liner' as well?

would love any feedback/ideas you have to offer!

thx!

OMG! thanks to everyone that replied! Unfortunately I didn't see the responses till now but I'm still so grateful for the tips. Is there a way to get updates when someone posts to your forum topic, or a way to reply to each person? sorry, this is my first time posting to a forum so not sure how to do stuff yet.

As for the size of the party, it's pretty big, 150 kids (plus parents) but there will be tons of actual Baked by Melissa cupcakes there so my sister insists that cake not be so huge to feed everyone. She sees it more of a centerpiece and just something for pictures and for her daughter to blow out candles on, vs. actually for feeding people. Hmmm, nothing like spending hours making a cake that's just for show!!! LOL.

Thanks for the ideas to tie dye or rainbow the cake itself... that was definitely something I was planning to do, but again, since it's not likely to be cut on-site, it's a bit of a bummer and 'inside joke' just for the bday girl herself, which is fine .

As for tie dying the fondant, I'm still hoping to figure out a way to do this without it getting too brown from overmixing while still getting all the separate colors to mix together well enough to be rolled out. All my tests have ended up over mixed, or undermixed. But I'm still hoping to figure out how to do it. I also got the mini-cupcake cake-pop mold that I was thinking of using for some accent 'cupcakes' around the edges/borders and/or to stick up out of the cake on wires (but fear they may be too heavy).

Anyway, if anyone has any other ideas or tips, please keep them coming! Cake is due next Friday morning, which gives me 4 days from today and I'm super wiped out from my last 2 cakes (pirate ship and nj jersey just posted to CC). Oye!

thanks again everyone!!!

Thanks to everyone who posted ideas and tips for me. I thought I'd attach the final product so you can see how it turned out. I have to say, it's certainly not my taste at all, but my niece LOVED it, as did everyone else at the party. In the end, after many tests with marbling the fondant to look like tie dye I resigned myself to the fact that while it can be done, it is best for small areas, as you want to be able to pick and choose the 'swirl' areas that look best vs. really using the whole piece. For this reason, I just did the top of the cupcake in solid tie dye. And then I added some tie dye dots to the bottom to tie the thing together. The strips were all I had left of the colors after so many tests, but I think it worked out.

yes, I had seen your great tutorial, but for this cake, it just wasn't working, I think mostly because of the colors I had to work with and what I was trying to do, which was match the colors and blend of the tie dye in the logo, not just trying to swirl the colors around in whatever mix naturally emerged from your method.

Also the placement on the cupcake itself needed to be quite specific (pink at the top, then blue, then a little yellow, then green). This meant complimentary colors were next to each other, which is what causes that browning that can happen when you roll it out.

When I did just give up on matching the logo and allow it to blend however it wanted, I ended up with the what you see on the top cupcake, but even then, there were definitely areas of it that looked more like the logo than others, so I just adjusted the best areas toward the front, etc.

If I were to just do tie dye again, I'd use your method and let it emerge however it wanted, but this was more about the Baked By Melissa cupcake icon, not just general tie dye, which made it a bit trickier.