Gizmo : Bake A Christmas Wish

     Most of you have probably seen some of the Cake Collaborations going around these days, I have been lucky to have been involved in a few of them : Cakenweenie to celebrate Tim Burton's 50th birthday, Sugar Spooks for Halloween, Sugar Skull Bakers for the Day of the Dead, and now Bake a Christmas Wish for Christmas. Bake A Christmas Wish collaboration features almost 100 bakers from around the world re-creating their favorite characters and/or scenes from their favorite Christmas movies in edible mediums. With tutorials for sale and a great raffle , we hope top make money for the Make A Wish Foundation. The Bake A Christmas Wish website can be found here, and the corresponding Facebook page here.

     For my contribution I chose the movie Gremlins and Gizmo. The first step in any cake design (or art project for that matter) is reasearch and references, so to the batcave, err computer, I go!

I decided to do Gizmo at the keyboard, but wanted his cute ears sticking out, so combined the image from the movie with an action figure.

My next step was getting all the colors of modeling chocolate I needed , kneaded (now there's an awkward series of words). After kneading I put them all in an air-tight tupperware so I could grab as needed during the process.

      I also made a small batch of rice cereal treats to serve as my base. I wanted to stick fairly close to the size of my printout, so I started by smooshing some cereal treats into the general shape and size I needed.

 Then I applied my first layer of modeling chocolate with white - this first layer is just to fill in the various nooks and crannies and have a base for modeling, so you can use whatever colors you have left over from previous projects if you want.

 Wrapping the modeling chocolate around the head (I just use a tiny bit of water to stick pieces together). I indented for the eyes also.

 Smooth down a bit.

 This is a bottom view of the body with indentations made for the legs (and I couldn't resist giving him cute little Mogwai butt cheeks :)

 Deepening the eye sockets

 Adding the eyeballs. Although I always use modeling chocolate for modeling figures, I stick to fondant or gumpaste for the eyeballs because it is way easier to paint on.

 Adding more modeling chocolate to build up the features.

    When it's time to paint the eyeballs I try and find circle cutters to impress and indentation so I have a shape to follow, which helps keep a nice circle shape, especially if you have shaky hands like I do.                                    
                                      
 A little messier than I hoped for, and I kind of gave him a lazy eye, but I was tired at this point and to lazy to start the eyes over :(

                                      
Starting to add the other colors and facial features.

                                     
The body before texturing:

                                      
        And after:

Almost there:

Starting on the keyboard. I used Styrofoam as a base so it would be a nice, even slab.

Adding the arms. I indented the ends to fit his hands into :

Finished except for the painting.

Normally I use my airbrush for much of the shading, but this time I opted for painting with dusts and alcohol.

And voila! Hope you enjoyed this peek behind the scenes :)

M

May the Force Be With You, Again; Part Three : Airbrush Stencil Lettering and the Completed Cake

     For the Star Wars cake I knew I wanted the inscription to look like the movie logo, but wasn't sure how to pull it off, and really, really didn't want to cut each letter out of gumpaste or MC by hand. I went on-line and sure enough, found a Star Wars font generator here. I typed in my message, saved the picture, then loaded into a photo program , turned it into the size I needed and printed it out. I printed out to copies, which I will explain later (the extra copy can be any size, no need to waste expensive ink.

     I used a glue-stick to attach it to a piece of cardboard and cut it out with an x-acto knife. A pain in the ass to be sure, but still less of one than cutting out the letters themselves.

 Make sure to extend your cuts past the corners so the cardboard pieces come out neatly:

 I rolled out a piece of gumpaste and set my stencil on top:

 First sirbrushed it with yellow, trying to keep the airbrush as perpendicular to the piece as possible without spilling to avoid spraying color under the stencil edges:

 I went over it two more times with orange and red for shading:

 Lift stencil off carefully:

 Here you can see my extra copy I mentioned earlier. I kept it so I would know where to paint inside the letters since I couldn't cut out the negative pieces. Believe me, if you try to rely just on your memory you are bound to mess up, at least I would. After the colored airbrush dried I went over it with a paintbrush and black color. This took forever to dry, so I let it dry curved over a cake dummy with the same circumference as my cake was going to be so it would crack if I tried to put a flat logo on a rounded cake.

A lot of work for the words, but I loved the end result. Of course, if I had an edible ink printer I would have printed that sucker out in a heartbeat- I am not (that) crazy!

 And the finished cake. All the figures are rice cereal treat cores (except Chewie and C3PO who both have MC cores) , covered in MC, and painted with dusts and or airbrushed. The Death Star was just a piece of black foam board airbrushed with white and black food color,

May the Force Be With You, Again; Part Two, Making a Galaxy Cake Board

     Like many others I have been guilty of leaving an unfinished , silver cake board. Now, I don't think that is always bad, but unless you're Mike McCarey , your cakes will probably only be improved by decorating your board as well.

     For the Star Wars cake I wanted my board and cake to match and look like a galaxy far, far, away.
First I colored my fondant a deep blue and covered the board. Then I randomly airbrushed with deep blue and black:

 Then I remembered gradeschool art class and grabbed myself a (New) toothbrush. I poured a little white airbrush color onto the brush and flicked it onto the board:

 I then went back in with white in the airbrush to make little galaxy-ish shapes

 I colored the cake itself the same way (actually I did the cake first, which is why it doesn't look quite as nice as the board in my opinion as I was still getting a feel for it)