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Saturday, November 13, 2010

Contest Winning Cake (on the 2nd try:)

      I'm pretty happy that one of my cakes won the Halloween cake contest on the Cakes We Bake website. There were a lot of really awesome cakes like Zombie Dog by Paul Joachim and the very creepy Spoils the Clown cake by Tami Chitwood. I won with my "Ghost" cake that I had actually done for the Threadcakes competition this summer and failed to place with any of my 13 (yes I went a little nuts) entries. I still have all the step-by step pictures from that cake, so since I'm in a great mood from the validation of winning something I decided to post about it. UPDATE: I found out today(11/15) that this cake also one 2nd place in the Cake Central Halloween cake Contest!!!
This is the kick-ass t-shirt I based my cake on by Droopy, DRP, if it's still in stock you can buy it here (I did). I started off with a half sheet of chocolate cake flavored with a little bourbon. I had printed out a larger version of the t-shirt, and made a rough waxed paper template and cut out the basic shape
I then cut out other elements out of the original template and used them as templates for the elements I wanted to stand out

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In this photo you can see I've started to build-up the face area as well. After the basics were carved and placed I mixed together cake and frosting to make a clay-ish texture (like cake-pops) that I used to form the hair and other fine elements that would be hard to carve
When I had most of the details I covered it with a chocolate syrup-based frosting.
Next up: covering the whole thing in  a layer of fondant:

After that was trimmed I started painting with gel colors thinned with vodka.
As I worked, I was adding in different elements and layers of fondant, in the next picture I had made the 2nd hand of fondant, as well as the teeth on the first wrist
I just kept adding layers and painting as I went


At this point I thought that the board needed to be black- I was hoping I could just paint it, but the surface was too slick. I took all my scraps of colored fondant and gumpaste and mixed them together- ending with a purple shade. I laid it around the cake and painted it w/ black airbrush food color.
And the finished product:




This one was a lot of fun to do. Painting on fondant is probably my favorite technique. Hope you enjoyed seeing it come together.

10 comments:

  1. Julie, that is AMAZING!!! You are soooooooo talented!! Keri from MI

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  2. Thank you, you are sooooo awesome for saying that and commenting!

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  3. That is crazy ridiculous amazing!

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  4. Thats Incredable Julie, You are Definatly Great At Cake Decorating, I only hope i get as good as you some day , i am a beginner, you can see my cakes i have done here
    http://jaciscakedesigns.blogspot.com/
    we also voted on your cake at cakes we bake, Just Awesome Job , COngradulations

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  5. It was very cool to see the process! Some techniques I never would have though of. I love it :)

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  6. Love it! A true artist at work. Thanks for sharing this!

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  7. How did your cake last? I'm guessing that you weren't putting it in a fridge? I want to try fondant over a cake with some cake-pops ish sculpting but it's really hot and humid here and I'm scared my cake-pops clay will melt under my fondant.

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  8. Thanks so much for sharing your how-to of this impressive cake. I used the cake-crumb clay idea and it worked beautifully!

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  9. Sorry, didn't see comments till now- glad to hear your cake went well:) With fondant on a cake should be good for 2-3days- I never refridgerate, although humidity does wreak havoc on fondant:(

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  10. I seen your link on cakes we bake. This cake is so impressive, i had to follow link here because i could not believe this was an actual cake.. GREAT JOB!!!

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