Rock Climbing Wall Cake

We have a really cool rock wall at Cornell and they offer lots of programs for youth and adults. I had the opportunity to make a rock climbing wall cake for a boy celebrating his birthday at the Cornell climbing wall. He and his friends would spend the day learning more about climbing, practicing and later diving into some delicious vegan cake! I wrote this post to help you make your own climbing wall cake. This cake is intermediate in difficulty. You should have basic decorating skills and be really comfortable working with fondant. The height of the cake makes it more challenging to cover than a standard layer cake.

Making the climbing wall cake

You can see in the picture that this is a HUGE pile of cake! You can make this whatever size you want, but keep in mind that your cake needs to be stable enough to stay standing. I used a single layer 9" cake split and filled, followed by two layers of 8" cake split and filled and finished the top off with 1/2 of an 8" cake layer cut and layered to make a split and filled 1/4 layer. This cake was vegan chocolate, filled with dairy free peanut butter frosting. After assembling the piles of cake, I put it in the fridge to set-up. You need it to be very firm to receive the fondant covering. Before covering with fondant, removed it from the fridge and top it with a pretty substantial layer of frosting to make the "rock" have a nice shape. Then, put it back in fridge to fully chill. You may recruit the help of your freezer for this process if you aren't too patient, or use the time to prepare your fondant and other decorating supplies. You want your climbing wall cake base to be strong and sturdy for the covering of fondant.

Time for Fondant

I used gray fondant as a base and added in bits of chocolate, black and white to make a marbleized rock looking surface. Have fun with this! The best rule of thumb is to stop mixing before you think you are done. This will help the "rock" seem realistic and avoid the trap of having it blend into one color. Roll out your fondant evenly and cover the entire mountain. Because this is a tall, oddly shaped cake you will need to roughly estimate the size you need. Measure the height and double that in both directions to have a general guide of the size you'll need. You don't need a fully smooth surface - it is a ROCK after all. That is one of the fun parts of this cake. You can overlap fondant and it will even look ok if it is on the "messy" side if you aren't a pro at smoothing fondant yet.

Adding the Details!

To make the little climbing wall accents mold fondant into little nubs and use a toothpick to place them into the cake (you could also use royal icing). I used a gum paste/fondant mix to sculpt the rock climber and then made the flag from paper and a little yellow cocktail type stick. As you add those rock holds and the person (or people?) your climbing wall cake will take shape and start to look like a real mountain!