Hot Air Ballon Teddy Cake and Buttercream Techniques

I seem to have so much more brain-space now that the builders have left. No - the kitchen is not yet finished, that's in the hands of the cabinet-maker now (but I'm not supposed to be talking about that, remember?!).
 The house is quiet, and relatively neat - at least until 12pm when the kids finish school - and my creative juices are flowing again. *Aaah, relief!*
So, I made this cake just because I wanted to!

Thankfully, I have a bunch of  cookie and cupcake-pals that come around every week for classes, so I can foist my cakes onto them for tea! Thanks, gals (and the occasional guy!)

If you haven't yet seen a how-to for this buttercream technique, here's a quick explanation;

Crumb coat a cake - ignore the two-tone icing in mine, it should be the colour of the icing you are using for piping.

Pipe dots of icing onto the cake with a large plain round icing tip - I used an Ateco 806

Use a palette knife, or spoon to smoosh the dot

Continue all the way around the cake. Finish with a column of dots in the last gap.

This was a two-layer  6-inch (15cm) cake. 

It took a large batch of swiss meringue buttercream  (double all the quantities in that recipe**) to fill, crumb-coat and complete the technique. 

**you'll need 10 egg whites, which is exactly the amount in a bottle of Woolworths fresh egg whites - which I don't get paid to say! ; ) 

Happy creating!

xxM