"Dashing through the....No"

I haven't had the opportunity to make many cakes lately, so for my family's Christmas celebration I decided to bring a cake. And no ordinary cake, but Tardar Sauce the internet sensation Frumpy Kitty Cake:)

To start I printed off a picture of Tard the approximate size I wanted, and got a hunka hunka RKT. I wanted to be able to work in advance because of my work schedule so I decided to make the kitty himself out of RKT and place him on a cake. Since it was for Christmas I decided on a grumpy santa coming out of the chimney.

Once I carved out a shape that sort of resembled the grumpy cat's torso I gouged out some eyeholes and added some modeling chocolate details:

Then I covered it all with a thin layer of modeling chocolate to get a smooth surface:

Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, Bat Kitty"

While doing the eyeballs I had an idea for placing them. No matter how careful I am I always manage to distort my spheres when placing them, so I used the right size measuring spoon (dusted with a little cornstarch) to press them in place with no distortion!

Building up more layers with modeling chocolate: (the eyes I did with gumpaste so I could paint them better later)

Then the tricky part, I suck at covering weird shapes with fondant (who am I kidding I suck at normal cake shapes too- just have to know how to hide things:): I kept some plastic wrap over it while I smoothed to keep it from drying out to soon, looks kind of spooky:

Starting to see the details underneath:

Using gumpaste tools to further refine the features:

Added a gumpaste nose:

At this point I added an ear made of gumpaste, and stuffed it with wadded waxed paper until it was dry.

Then it was time for the chimney, coconut cake with chocolate ganache, looks a little lumpy, but I wasn't concerned with perfect edges for this one as it was going to be covered with textured "bricks" anyway:

For the bricks I used a cereal box cardboard template for the size, and then textured it with a grill scrubber:

Stuck to the ganache with a bit of water:

I used some brown and black food color to "age" my bricks, this was the first of several layers:

 It was the same sort of thing for the top grey bricks: marbled black modeling chocolate with white fondant, textured it with a stiff paintbrush:

 Then black food color for age; I could have sworn I took a picture of my mortaring, but I must not have. I tried a few ideas then finally settled on melted white chocolate textured with one of those crappy little plastic stiff paintbrushes, it set-up as you went, and started to powder like real mortar:

Now that the chimney was done I started painting Tard. To start I covered his eyes in painter's tape so I wouldn't over-airbrush onto them:

Layering browns and blacks, and pink for the nose and mouth area:

Pretty blue eyes:

Then I started the hand-painted details for fur and eyes:

Threw on a Santa hat of modeling chocolate:

I added some straws in the cake to support the weight of the RKT:

I was going to use fondant regularly for the snow, but on a whim I decided to use the microplane grater, with great results, For added snowy sparkle I sprinkled with a little disco dust on top, though it doesn't show in the photos

And voila! Grumpy Santa Kitty