This is my first Harley cake – made for my husband’s birthday.

I’m not posting a recipe for this one – since it’s really all about the design. You can make any kind of cake or filling for this.

For the cake on the bottom, I made an 8″ chocolate cake layer, and purchased an 8″ chocolate chip cheesecake. I stacked these, with the cheesecake on the bottom, and a little frosting between the layers.

I also made 2 – 6″ layers for the cake on top (1 chocolate and 1 vanilla).
I filled the 2 smaller layers with a raspberry and mascarpone whipped cream filling. Hopefully there will be a favorite for everyone in this cake!

The outer design was the most challenging for sure. I darkened my cream cheese buttercream with Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa powder, and frosted the bottom layers with this. I wanted the bottom layer to resemble a motorcycle tire – so I pressed mini chocolate chips into the sides of the cake for “traction”.

For the top, smaller layers, I chose to color another batch of cream cheese buttercream a caramel-brown color. Then I frosted the layers, and added some white and dark chocolate frosting swipes of frosting around the top and sides. Once I smoothed this all together, it created a beautiful “marble” design that I was quite happy with. This represents the scenery from the Badlands in S. Dakota – a popular biker’s destination.

The cakes were “stacked” by placing 4 wooden skewers into the bottom layers, flush with the top of the cake. Then I placed the smaller cake on top. I used some chocolate ganache to surround the smaller cake, then circled the seam of the 2 cakes with some chocolate candy balls.

I struggled with the Harley emblem – but ended up hand-piping the lettering onto the emblem – formed out of melted chocolate bark. I secured this to the cake with some of the leftover frosting.

This beautiful cake HAD to be topped with a toy Harley motorcycle, which completed the design!