Fondant=Play-do for adults

We had a little cake contest in our stake a couple weeks ago and I searched for some time for THE PERFECT CAKE. It was hard to decide what to do: if I did fondant, which I love, then I wouldn't exactly be going for the taste factor since fondant tastes like sugary play-do. But you can't get the smoothness and same effects with buttercream. It was a toss-up. I finally ended up asking myself, am I doing this to win or am I doing this for enjoyment? I found a superb design online (see below) that was inspiration, and figured it might actually help me satisfy both sides of the question. Sadly, I didn't win. Happily, I couldn't have cared less since I was SO pleased with how my cake turned out. You can see that I deviated some from the original design, but only because I was fast running out of time and was making a much smaller cake. Oh, and I was too lazy to make so many colors of fondant, even with all the help from the peanut gallery. And let me give credit where credit is due: click on the pic to see more info on the original cake artist. And I'd like to thank everyone who helped me reach this pinnacle in my career: Derek for herding young crazy monkeys away from the table and the young crazy monkeys for helping roll the zillions of little yellow balls around the base of the cake... Thank you, thank you! :)