In this CUTE free cake video tutorial, I'm going to show you how to make an adorable Sledding Snowmen Cake design that would be perfect for winter celebrations, Christmas parties, and more!
A Sledding Cake Theme
We just love snowmen, and we wanted to create a fun winter cake design that featured very simple, very cute snowmen, but also a sledding scene!
Last year, we turned a sheet cake into a snowy sledding hill, which featured Santa and his reindeer racing to the bottom. (Santa and Rudolph Sledding Cake Video Tutorial)
Spiral Cake Tier
For today's cake, we're going to create a sledding hill for our snowmen by simply carving a ledge from the front of a round tier- this is known as a Spiral Tier, and they are not only fun to create, but they add such great dimension to the cake!
Fondant Spiral Tier Cake vs. Buttercream Spiral Tier
Spiral tier cake designs can be created in fondant or buttercream- whatever you feel most comfortable with!
In our video tutorial, we covered our fondant tier in fondant. However, if you are interested in seeing examples of buttercream-frosted spiral tiers- we have two free cake videos to share: our Train Spiral Tier Cake, and our Snake Birthday Cake!
Sledding Snowmen Cake
In Part One of our video, I will demonstrate carving and covering the cake with ganache and then fondant. You will also see some of the prep work for our snowmen and trees.
In Part Two of our video, everything comes together. We complete our snowmen and add then to the cake, along with our royal icing details.
Materials for Sledding Snowmen Cake
Today we used an 8 inch, three layer white almond sour cream cake, which was filled with our fluffy vanilla buttercream recipe, frosted with white chocolate ganache, and covered with fondant (Liz Marek's recipe). The cake base was three 14" stacked and glued cardboard cake circles, covered in a plastic blue tablecloth.
White Chocolate Ganache: (3 to 1 ratio of chocolate to heavy cream) -- We used 39 oz (1117 g) Ghirardelli Classic White Baking Chips and 13 oz (372ml) heavy cream.
Fondant: 34 oz. (We used Elizabeth Marek's recipe). We had 18 oz leftover.
Royal Icing- A half batch of our royal icing recipe is more than enough.
Piping Tips: I used a Wilton 4 (round tip) and an Ateco 101 petal tip.
Floral Wire- I used brown, 22 gauge (for arms of snowmen)
2 sugar cones for our two trees (sugar cone is approx. 5 inches tall)
Coloring Gel: We used Wilton Leaf Green for our trees and other green accents, Chocolate Brown for the sled, Lemon Yellow for hat and scarf.
Food Coloring Pen in Black (ours is Americolor)- For details on snowmen's faces
FMM Multi Ribbon Cutter- Optional. We used this to cut the strips for our sugar cone trees.
Pink petal dust (for snowmen cheeks) -- I used a "Watermelon" shade of pink petal dust.
Confetti Sprinkles, silver dragees, silver and gold hologram twinkle dust (optional), small star cutter - Optional, used to decorate our Christmas tree.
Misc: Fondant smoothers, vegetable shortening, piping gel (for glue), small paint brushes, parchment paper
Additional Notes:
The strips of fondant for my trees were 22 inches long, 1 ¼ inch wide.
Sleds are 3 inches (7.5 cm.) long and 1 ½ inches (3.75 cm) wide.
More Fun Snowman Themed Cakes
We've made many cheerful Snowman Themed Cakes over the years!
I'm linking a few of our favorite snowman cakes below, but don't miss our full roundup of favorite Christmas and Winter Cakes: Favorite Christmas and Winter Cake Tutorials!
Sweet Snowman Cake- Free Video
Tiered Snowman Cake-Free Video
Enjoy the Video
We hope that you enjoy our Sledding Snowman Cake! If you give the cake design a try, we would love for you to leave a comment and photo below!
can you use buttercream instead of fondant? I'm going to make this cake, but I need to make it 2 weeks in advance, and I don't think you can freeze fondant, right?
Hi Ginny-- I haven't experimented too much personally with freezing cakes that have been covered with fondant... I think that if sealed tightly in a cake box...and then thawing in the fridge (fully sealed).. should be fine. However, I understand wanting to try it in buttercream for peace of mind.
When freezing a buttercream frosted cake, I still seal tightly (tape) in a cake box and thaw in the refrigerator before removing from box and bringing to room temp. If any condensation occurs, just place in front of a fan until dry.
If you'd like to see an example of spiral tiers done in buttercream, you may like to watch our train cake video-- Here's a link to Part 1--
https://www.mycakeschool.com/video-tutorials/train-cake-part-1/
Thanks Melissa! I'm going to try the spiral tiers, it will be perfect for the snowboarding cake I'm doing for my grandson! He wants a chocolate cake so I was thinking of trying your classic chocolate recipe. Is that a good one as far as carving goes? This will be my first experience in carving a cake.
Thanks again for your help!!! I love watching your tutorials and your techniques!
I forgot I had another question….where can I find a long cake knife like the one you use to carve the cake in your sledding into Christmas video? I've searched on the internet but the longest one I can fine is a 14". Thanks!
Hi Ginny, The Classic Chocolate cake is not as dense as the durable recipe, but if you do your carving while the cake is still partially frozen, I think you will be fine to use it. This is a link for the knife that Melissa has, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Lamsonsharp+sheetcake+knife We were shocked by the price. Melissa has had hers a very long time, we know she didn't pay anything near that price. Maybe you could google for a 16" sheet cake knife and find something more reasonable.
Thanks BeBe! BTW I made the Classic Chocolate cake today and I have to say it was fabulous!!! I'm going to use it for another project I'm doing, so I can use the durable recipe that you suggested for my carving. Thanks for all your help!
Hi Ginny, so happy that you like the Classic Cho. cake recipe and thanks for posting your opinion. I think you will be happy using the Durable recipe for your carving project. I know your grandson is going to love his cake!
How much batter did you use to make the cakes? I know its the WASC recipe but did you make 2 or 3 batches?
Hi Valerie, I doubled the WASC recipe so I would have 3 to 3 1/2 cups batter per pan ( my pans are 2 inches deep. You will have some batter leftover for another use.
Hi Melissa great tutorial loved the way you done the slope for the snowmen, the whole cake looks great ill have to try this one thanks so much.
Amazing to watch you make this wonderful cake. So much fun to watch this becoming such a cute cake , thank you both so very much.