This was a little girl's first birthday cake. It was a lot of fun to make. I'm not a fan of fondant covered cakes. Although beautiful, I believe cakes should be equally delicious in the mouth and to the eyes. Covering a cake in fondant requires that you put a thinner layer of icing underneath than normal. Since I use Italian buttercream, the icing is one of the most decedent, desirable parts of the cake. This cake I iced in Italian buttercream, but did a finishing technique to make it look like fondant. All the accents (stripes, balls, butterflies, flowers, dots, and letters) were fondant.