The Little Engine That Could (force me to post again)

So I'd like to say that I have some awesome excuse for not posting, but my only reason is that I haven't really been baking much of anything in the last few months.  Lame-sauce, I know.  In order to make up for my shameful lack of baked goods, I bring you phase 1 of my most difficult cake yet: Henry the Tank Engine.

One of my co-workers asked me to make a birthday cake for his adorable little boy's 3rd birthday party.  He saw the Spongebob Squarepants cake that I made several months ago and liked what I had done, so he asked if I would be willing to make a cake for him - of course! :-)  The tricky part?   He and his wife are throwing a "Henry the Tank Engine" party and he wanted the cake in the shape of Henry (the #3 Engine from Thomas the Tank Engine).  Now,  I've done a few character cakes before, but they've all been drawn on a flat cake. My challenge here is that this will be a carved cake and it will involve some fondant work, both things which I've never done!

I wanted to do a practice round so that the real cake wouldn't be my first time practicing these new techniques, so over the last couple of days I made marshmallow fondant and began practicing Henry's face.  It's not perfect, but for never having worked with this medium before I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out. 

This was round 1:

 Round 2:

Round 3 (the one I'm happiest with):

Once I'd picked the face I was going to use for the trial cake, C was allowed to pick a face to chomp since he'd been asking since yesterday if he could bite Henry's face! The poor Henry was Henry #2.  First went his forehead:

 And then went his nose.  Poor Henry didn't see it coming...

Stay tuned for updates on my foray into cake carving!