When my friend approached me to make a cake to celebrate her daughter being awarded her black belt, I thought I would have another year to figure out what to do. But Zoe is unstoppable and this young wisp of a girl at the ripe old age of 10 (yes, I said 10) was awarded her black belt on the weekend. I have no doubt that she will take the world by storm one day.

There are not a lot of options with a karate themed cake. Thank goodness I saw the cake done by Shawna McGreevy a few weeks ago (I just adore her work!). With a few modifications, it totally fit the bill for what I was looking for! The red of the cake represents the training gi that Zoe was wearing when she took her 4 hour blackbelt test (her parents were not allowed to watch, could you imagine?!). Anyway, this is an 8" vanilla bean cake with vanilla bean buttercream frosting covered in MMF. The black belt around the cake is a mixture of modeling chocolate and fondant and the karate girl was sculpted from fondant.