Tuesday, November 2, 2010

It make look like a cake, but to the Trained eye...

A little while ago I posted about my first foray into fondant work as part of a commissioned cake.  You can read about that here.  The second part of the challenge was sculpting the actual engine part of the cake.  I think it came out pretty well for a first attempt, but what do you think?

First I had to sculpt the cake into the shape of engine.  The trick here was freezing the cake the day before.  It makes the cake 10x sturdier and makes it more"forgiving" when a nutcase like me tries to sculpt for the first time.  As long as you wrap the cake in several layers of plastic wrap before putting it in the freezer the cake will still be moist when you serve it.


The second step is applying a crumb coat.  For those of you who don't watch cake shows as obsessively as I do, a crumb coat is a thin layer of buttercream that you set in the fridge before applying the real deal buttercream.  Basically, it prevents the hogillion crumbs that you created when carving the cake from getting mixed up in the outer, decorative layer of icing.  Think of it as a "happy hat" for your cake.


I didn't take pictures as I was decorating because not only was I covered in frosting, everything that I had touched in the course of the previous 2 hours was covered as well.  Since I didn't want my camera to join the peanut gallery, I decided to take pictures once I was done.  Only I forgot... and packaged the cake in a huge box, covered it, and sealed it with tape.  Crap... So C, got to take pictures once he got it into work... while it was storming... good times.  Anywho, this is what the finished Henry looked like!





Apparently C's co-workers were afraid to cut into him.  This was the damage around lunch time, but once someone had the cajones to take the face off, I hear it didn't last too much longer.