H's bestie Ella turned 16 just before COVID started. Hers was the last birthday party that snuck in under the wire... and Hallie's last social outing before figuring out she had mono (ugh!). Ella adores cheese, and she asked me for a cake that looked like a cheese. Jarlsberg has such an iconic look, I decided to form the cake to look like a wheel of Jarlsberg, but customized for Ella.
I made a giant, 12" cake that was at least 3 layers high. (Due to the passage of time, I have literally no idea what flavor it was, but this was really all about the design.) Despite that I get nervous working with fondant, it was the perfect medium to represent the waxy exterior and even the internal "cheese" itself. I stacked the layers and carved around the edges to round them like a wheel of cheese. I looked closely at the Jarlsberg design and cut out the black and red designs to approximate the shapes, down to the little orange dots! The black on the top is leaf-shaped scallops, and the side of the cake had more of an oval shape. For the cheese label itself, I stayed close to the look and tried to approximate the font using food-safe markers. My favorite part of the cake was the hunk of cheese cut out from the wheel. After covering the sides with the creamier, light colored fondant to represent the cheese, I used a ball tool to dig in slight indentations to represent the holes in a Swiss cheese. I thought it had a nice, realistic look!
This cake was a monster - it weighed a ton! - and Ella was delighted. Yay!
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