Thank you for the instructions! Mine came out pretty well and the kids loved it. Here's what I learned:

1. I decided not to do the rotation effect, but just to make a straight cube, using a boxed Devil's Food cake mix. For this, it was good to make 4 layers rather than 3. The layers were thin enough that I would have had to cut the base down pretty small in order to get a true cube with just 3 layers to build the height. If you are a perfectionist I actually recommend cutting the base to slightly smaller than the height of the cake, because once you layer it up, the cake may compress down a little bit under the weight of the layers.

2. The fondant was time consuming, but worked fantastically well. I recommend making it a few days ahead because I was tired after just doing that! Kneading it ziploc baggies did not work for me - it leaked out - but the fondant stored perfectly in the fridge in ziplocs after it was ready.

3. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to do a complete coat of frosting underneath the grenache or just filling between the layers, but I did the complete coat. That was time consuming, too, but worked fine and was tasty. I needed to let the frosting set up, so I did that the night before the party, and did the grenache a couple hours before the party.

4. The grenache took maybe an hour or two to set up before the fondant could be applied.

5. The fondant squares were quick to cut out using a heavy paper template and a sharp knife. My son did most of it. Visually, it makes a big difference to round the corners of each square after you cut it out.

6. I recommend putting on the fondant squares as close to the party time as possible. At least with the boxed cake mix, which is quite light, I found that they weighed the cake down so that it started to compress. After a few hours, the compression was visible, with the bottom row of squares starting to smoosh into the cake plate.

Overall, I was glad I left myself plenty of time to make this, but I had fun!



