Last September, I baked a grumpy fuzzball cake for SIPB. That grumpy fuzzball cake was frosted primarily with rolled fondant, a dough-like frosting that is made with gelatin, food-grade glycerine, and the usual frosting suspects. But I don't love the taste or texture of fondant. And I really hated working with it.
So when I decided to make another grumpy fuzzball cake for SIPB, I opted to use only buttercream:
I like to think it turned out much better than its predecessor. The random fuzz looks more cohesive and even grumpier, the cake is rounder (okay, that has nothing to do with my frosting choice and everything to do with the fact that it's a five layer cake), the eyes look and cut better in buttercream than white chocolate, and the frosting tasted better because it was texturally lighter (and made from butter). The contrast of the plain, smooth white shoes with the chaotic black fuzzball turned out exactly the way I wanted it to.
What all went into this grumpy fuzzball? Five differently-sized sour cream chocolate cake rounds, two miniature white cake loafs, raspberry filling, about 2 quarts of black dark chocolate buttercream frosting, about a quart of vanilla buttercream frosting, and more than a handful of hours of labor. But completely worth it.