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These are the sugarcraft cakes I've made so far. They're listed in order of when I did them. Click on the thumbnail to see the full-sized photo.
This was from Quick & Easy Novelty Cakes by Carol Deacon.
This was from Lovable Character Cakes by Debbie Brown.
I made this cake top for Corran's sister's wedding.
This is my own design, based on graphics from the TV show. The couch is the cake. The figures are entirely sugarpaste.
This is my own design (for Corran's mother, a teacher). Each book is actually a separate layer of cake, surrounded in sugarpaste.
This is my own design. It was a quick cake because instead of covering the body with one smooth layer, I just quickly made very large feathers and layered them. I let the neck dry overnight before attaching it and putting on the head to prevent it from sagging, and did the same with the tail.
Update: I made another version of this cake a few years later:
Same basic methodology, except this time I added quick feather texture using a knife.
This is also my own design, made for our role-playing group. I used the Wilton sports ball pan to make the eyeball, covered it in white sugarpaste, and then placed a sugarpaste cornea on. I painted on the red lines with gel colour, and shaped the fingers up around the cake, holding them in place long enough to stick and dry. The second picture shows detail of how I pierced the surface of the eyeball with some fingernails, and then painted a drizzle of blood coming out of the hole. I flooded the base with red royal icing. This was an extremely popular cake with my RPG friends.
This cake and other eyeballs can be seen on my collections page.
Another cake made for my RPG group. This time, I used the characters from the game I'm GMing (details can be found on my RPG pages). The third picture is to prove these cakes get eaten, and because it seemed fairly accurate for the end of a role-playing session: the characters are all littered on the field after a battle.
Incidentally, the reason there's a character lying at the side of the cake was because I ran out of time and he was too soft to stand on his own before I had to leave for our RPG session.
This was for Corran's birthday, since he's a fan of the Discworld novels, by Terry Pratchett (more information on my books page). I have compiled a page of photos showing how I made the Discworld cake.
This was my first attempt at using chocolate fondant instead of sugarpaste. The chocolat fondant is much more expensive to make, but is easier to work with. It taste better too, but is a lot like fudge, so few people could eat more than a few mouthfuls of it. The fairy is sugarpaste, and her wings were done by piping royal icing onto lightly greased bits of waxed paper and letting them dry overnight. This was my first attempt at filigree.
This was made for an RPG session. I used the Wilton sports ball cake pan for the cake, putting one half down on its flat side, and cutting the other to fit against it on a 45-degree angle (see the fourth picture for a very rough diagram). Then I covered it with white sugarpaste and moulded on a browline and nose bone (see the first picture). I added a jaw with holes for teeth, although at this point I realized that I had made the front of the cake too wide, so the jaw was also subsequently too wide to be human. The result is it looks more Orc-like. To keep the jaw up from the board, I set it with two chopsticks stacked under it until it dried overnight.
I then painted the eyeholes, nose and mouth cavity with black gel colouring. Then I painted the rest of the skull with a thinned-out mixture of brown, copper, and yellow gel colours. I crafted teeth with slightly tinted ivory paste and let them dry. When they were dry, I put them in the tooth holes and glued them lightly with water, enough to stick but loose enough that if anyone decided to pull one out, it should come whole with a fashioned root (most did but a few broke). I then painted the teeth with a thinned-out brown, black, and yellow mixture, allowing the colour to set deeply in tooth indentations.
This cake and other skeletons can be seen on my collections page.
Another one for the RPG group. Ever wonder what a golbin-like creature might look like without its skin on? Okay, you probably haven't wondered that unless you're a sick freak like me. I used some of the anatomical drawings from the online version of Gray's Anatomy to get an idea of muscle and bone attachments, then I pretty much winged it from there. The muscles were built out of pink sugarpaste, and I then painted over them with a red-black mixture to highlight the striations. I painted the cake board with red food colouring afterwards for extra gore.
This one was for my husband's Australian siblings who came to visit us to see snow. Not that Las Vegas has snow, of course; we drove to Utah for it. This cake didn't turn out quite as I wanted, but I guess it's okay. The cake is the skirt of the kangaroo. I covered the cake board with royal icing stars to mimic a snowy landscape. The snowman is made out of tin foil balls with royal icing stars, and toothpicks for arms.
A colleague at work was embarking on a six-week backpacking tour across Europe, so I made this as a goodbye cake for her.
A simple cake made for my husband's birthday in 2002, as he is a fan of Macintosh computers.
This was made for a friend who enjoys tacos. The taco shell was made with yellow sugarpaste with Oreo crumbs mixed in. Some eating it said they found the "meat" to be "disturbingly realistic."
This was made for the office where I used to volunteer, an environmentalist organization allied with other left-wing groups. The guy near the front with the anti-radioactive sign kept slumping forward, invariably hitting the leader in the back of the head with his sign. This lead to widespread speculation on the part of the eaters of the cake that it was yet another sign of racism, because just when the black guy gets to lead a march, the white guy has to ruin it for him by smacking him in the back of the head with a giant sign. By the end of the consumption of the cake, an entire complicated plot had been woven regarding the various "characters" on the cake, all stemming from this apparently racially motivated crime.
What this really proves, of course, is that activists are insane. *grin*
This was another husband-birthday-cake, but unfortunately there was an accident with the camera and the pictures died so these are some crappy scans instead. We happened to have kept the cover and two of the monsters. The original cake showed these and several other monsters pushing the cover of the book-cake open and crawling out. In addition to the beholder and carrion crawler shown here, there was also a kraken, a mind flayer, and some oozes (made out of solidified gelatin).
I cheated big time with this one. The cover includes inedible (but non-toxic) gold paint, foil, and plastic.
For those who don't know what the actual book looks like, there's a picture of it here on Amazon.com.
I made this cake for the 2003 ICES show here in Las Vegas. The last photo shows it on the table at ICES, surrounded by much prettier things.
You can learn more about how this cake was made with the orc head tutorial.
This is made using the Wilton Wonder Mold pan and associated teen doll pick. The veil is a bit of lace I had left over from goodie bags from my own wedding, folded into a fan and glued with hot glue. The decorations on the woman and the dress are made with Jem cutters and dusted with pearl dust. The chain was made by rolling out links with a lot of powdered sugar over them, linking them, and letting it dry in the sugar. Then I dusted the sugar off with a damp (not wet) brush, making the chain hard but flexible.
The cake was made for a women's activism group meeting. We were discussing how best to get out some truth about the group Promise Keepers, which advocates male domination in the household. Thus, this pretty little bride has a ball and chain keeping her tied down, and she carries a protest sign with the following quotation:
"Sit down with your wife and say something like this, 'Honey, I've made a terrible mistake...I gave up leading this family, and I forced you to take my place. Now I must reclaim that role.'...There can be no compromise here. If you're going to lead, you must lead...Treat the lady gently and lovingly. But lead!" -- Tony Evans, Prominent Promisekeeper
For the record, I'm not opposed to marriage. I'm happily married; it's just that my husband and I are equal partners in this relationship. Not only am I not opposed to marriage, but I strongly advocate for the right of homosexuals to marry as well. Also for the record, I did extensive personal research on Promise Keepers, including calling them and speaking to a very nice woman in their office. In the end I came to the conclusion that individuals in the group are often decent people who genuinely want to live a good, honest life and treat their spouses well. It seems, though, from the quotation above and others, that at least some of the leaders of this group are much more set on patriarchal domination. I have a problem with that, hence my participation in an effort to expose those leaders. I do not oppose the group or its meetings; they're free to speak and meet whether I agree with their positions or not.
This cake was made for the same women's advocacy group as above, for another meeting. This meeting was focused on getting out the vote locally for the 2004 US election. The decorations were all made using Jem cutters except for the letters on top, which were made with standard cookie cutters.
Another cake made for the women's advocacy group. No political message here; the meeting this was made for just happened to be near Christmas. The branches were made using Jem cutters and set to dry overnight draped over curves. Then I stuck them on the cake, working from the bottom up. Fairly simplistic stuff.
This was for the end of my beginnerceramics class. Several students said they mistook it for someone's actual ceramic work, which I find dubious!
This was for the end of my advanced ceramics class, just before the Christmas break. Again, people insisted that they were confused at first and thought it was actually made out of clay. I'm once again confused by that, but thankful for their generous comments.
It is a tea pot because that seems to be one of the things one makes in ceramics a lot. It is "of doom" because there are skulls on it, masquerading as holly berries. This was done because during the course, it became apparent to me that some folks consider anything pleasant to be non-art, whereas anything unpleasant (such as skulls where there should not be skulls) qualifies as art. So I put them on to be cheeky!
This was for Corran's birthday in 2005. It is a model of Shelob the giant evil spider from Lord of the Rings, descending on Samwise Gamgee. For more photos and details on how to make this cake, please see the Shelob Tutorial page.
This was for my daughter's first birthday (October 2006). I had planned to do something fancy, but new-mother exhaustion coupled with my daughter's obsession for duckies resulted in the purchase and standard-instruction use of the Wilton 3-D Rubber Ducky Pan. As you can see from the photos, she loved it!
I made this for the third birthday of a neighbour's daughter in May of 2007. It was done fairly quickly with very basic decorations, but the little girl and her guests loved it as if it were a masterpiece. I used Wilton's Wonder Mold for the dress, which required two boxes of a standard mix cake (it rose high beyond the top of the pan but I cut it to size). However, on the very good advice of other cake decorators, I did not use Wilton's teen doll pick, because little girls are not happy when they pull out a Barbie doll and find that it has no legs! Instead I purchased an inexpensive Barbie, removed the clothes (which I wrapped as a small separate gift), widened the hole in the cake, and built up some fondant around her hips since the cake was not quite tall enough to accommodate the doll's long legs and pointy feet.
I then iced it with blue buttercream, allowing spread lines to form like pleats. I added more fondant around the doll as a bodice and piped a bit of buttercream at the bottom to hide the rough edge of the blue icing on the cake board. I then hid all seams and did extra decorations using gumpaste flowers I made earlier in the week using my Jem cutters. I used some extra flowers to stick on either side of the doll's pre-existing earrings. I also made a flat gift box with a toothpick in the centre for stability (this was removed before a child could attempt to eat it), and piped on the girl's name (I am horrible at piping so I'm pleased with how it turned out!). I stuck candles on the gift with additional gumpaste. The gift was allowed to dry overnight and put on the doll with fondant balls as glue just before delivery.
Unfortunately I forgot to take photos until after delivery and as you can see, a finger had already ended up in the front of the dress! But I did take some photos the day I mixed the icing and my daughter "helped" me with the cleanup!
View all photos of this cake full size on one page.
For Peo's second birthday, I made her a cake with all of her favourite TV show characters (actually, I had to stop before making all of the Muppet Show characters and Fraggles, because I ran out of time and out of room on the cake). It turned out to be a good strategy for making an elaborate cake while caring for a toddler, because I was able to make the figures for two weeks in advance, then make the cake the day before the party and simply stick the characters on.
Because I had plenty of time in making the characters, I worked on several at a time, allowing bits to dry on one while working on another. I used skewers in styrofoam to provide support for elevated limbs and other precarious pieces while they dried. I also left some skewers in place while the pieces were stored on the kitchen counter to prevent them from falling over.
The characters are:
View all photos of this cake full size on one page.
I made this cake on request of the Family to Family Connection, a great program that hosts lots of classes, crafts, and activities for children ages birth to 4. I take Peo there regularly and was pleased at having an opportunity to give back to such a worthy cause.
It was made for their Teenie Weenie Halloweenie Party, which expected anywhere from 50 to 100 guests. I made the Jack-O-Lantern out of one French Vanilla mix using the Wilton Sports Ball pan, and the base using two Dark Chocolate mixes in a 14" round pan. The Jack-O-Lantern cake was carved with ridges to allow the fondant to be pressed in slightly, and the face was done by cutting into the orange and than inlaying black to fit.
As with Peo's 2007 Birthday Cake above, I took a long time in advance (about two weeks) to use any toddler-free time I could scrounge to work on the mice, so two days before the event all I had to do was bake the cakes, cover them, shape the Jack-O-Lantern, and stick on all of the mice. Also as with the birthday cake, this allowed me to leave items to dry with skewers as support, as shown with the Darth Mouse and Obi Wan Mouse pictures.
I did plan many of the mice well in advance in order to include dynamic narratives, such as the Star Wars characters (the Darth/Obi Wan fight, with poor Luke off to the side with a flopsy lightsaber while Leia looks on in shock), the hospital scene with a doctor and a nurse examining the undead, the witch serving punch to the rag doll, and going with the mice theme, a mouse dressed as a cat scaring the heck out of a poor little fairy mouse.
I also included a special mouse dressed in Peo's home-made pie costume (see this journal entry with photos of her in her costume), taking care to make that mouse's eyes extra-big, since Peo has huge eyes.
The bird mouse was Peo's idea...she asked me to make one that looked like a bird, so I did!
View all photos of this cake full size on one page (some are very large).
First I made a rough plan by stacking my cake pans, taking a digital picture, and then loading that into Windows Paint. I used Google's image search to find photos of the characters in roughly the right sort of pose I wanted, and then scaled them accordingly in Paint to get an idea of where everyone would fit. This way I knew in advance what I had to make, what I had to bake, and where I'd have room for things to go. You can see that the original plan was to include three Gorgs (represented by three Junior pics), but I ran out of time so only Junior made it to the final cake. As expected, Peo asked where the King and Queen were, so I made up a story about them not being there right now.
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Then I modelled the characters in white fondant, using toothpicks as supports both internally and temporary external ones for holding pieces while they dried:
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Then I painted the characters with watered-down gel colours:
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Then I covered all the cakes in gray fondant, and then built on a slide for Red with pillars underneath and temporary toothpicks to hold it in place while it dried. I also dug out a hole for the sugar pond, which turned out more amber than I wanted because I'm still new to cooking sugar and always seem to let it go those few seconds too long. Lastly, I added a little rock with a hole to simulate the entrance into the Gorg garden.
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After placing all the characters, the doozer construction (made from pouring boiled sugar into the stick portions of lollipop molds), the platform for Sprocket (held up by fondant pipes that have toothpicks inside), and placing piped greenery and flowers all over to hide as much of my sloppy fondant covering as I could, the cake was done!
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Here's the cake being served at the party!
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This cake was made on styrofoam dummies so it could be entered into the 2009 That Takes The Cake! Austin Cake Show, in the Adult Intermediate division, Novelty/Special Occasion Tiered category. It won both its category and division! It was also featured in an editorial in the March 2009 issue of American Cake Decorating Magazine, where the editor said he and Roland Winbeckler spent a lot of time as judges appreciating all of the detail.
View all photos of this cake full size on one page (some are very large).
The mice are all made in basically the same way: first a body is allowed to harden on a toothpick. Then I build on whatever torso costume is needed. Then I shape a head and let it become firm but not dry. I attach the head and let it dry thoroughly. Then I add ears, any hair or hats, eyes, arms, any musical instruments or other held objects, and lastly the nose. These photos show the making of the Beatles (which I called the Rattles to extend the Beatles name-pun to mice).
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The tiny piano was the most complicated and challenging part of this cake. I started by rolling out black fondant and cutting the shape of the piano and let it dry completely. Then I cut a similar, smaller shape in mixed brown/yellow to look wood-like and affixed it to the black shape. Then I added a strip around the sides and a black beam across the mid-front. I cut some strips of the brown/yellow mix and put them in on their sides, roughly positioned based on photos of pianos I found online. Then I cut a strip of white fondant to size and put it on the front, and used the edge of a small knife to make indentations for the right number of keys (yes, this piano has a proper count of both black and white keys). I piped on the black keys and piped in some strings (it does not have anything close to the right number of strings). I put in some yellow bits around the back interior edge as well. Then I turned the whole thing upside down to put on the legs, which were clipped bits of toothpicks wrapped in black fondant, pushed into two layers of cut-out rectangles of fondant on the base. For the lid, I cut out a shape to match the bottom piece and let it dry completely. I wrapped a toothpick in some black fondant and let it get firm but not dry, then put a ball on either end and smushed those into place to hold the lid open. I decided to omit pedals due to time and complexity.
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For Elton John's glasses, I tried a new technique - at least, it's new to me. I experimented with different size drips of gelatin (one packet in 2 oz water) on a silicon mat, one part greased and the other part not. I discovered that the drips on the greased part spread further and dried faster, but curled as a result. Those on the non-greased part took a long time to dry and sometimes stuck a bit to the mat, but formed nice little "lenses". I wrapped two in fondant and put them on Elton's nose.
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Here are the drums before the mice were put on:
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The completed cake from several angles:
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Detail closeups of some of the mice:
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- The Beatles (aka The Rattles)
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- KISS
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- Elton John in Feather Costume
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- Hippies or Folk
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- The Biscuit Brothers and The Supremes
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- Mariachi Band
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- Two Elvises Arguing, Plus Digeridoo Player
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- Barbershop Quartet
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- The Three Tenors
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- Phantom of the Opera sneaking up on Brunhilda/Fat Lady
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- Sax/Blues Player and Disco John Travolta
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- Wizard of Oz
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- Mozart
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- Choir/Gospel
This was made for entry in the Cake Wrecks blog book tour's Wreckplica contest. The explanation can be found in this post. I left the wrapper on to prove it was a cupcake before I destroyed it, and to help contribute to a messy look since the baker being parodied always has a huge mess in her kitchen on Challenge episodes. Unfortunately, due to rescheduling of the event, I was unable to actually submit it in person. However, the blog folks did see it and included it in their Austin post.
Kerry Vincent, the figure sitting on the floor and crying, was to be the recipient of the original cake. She has since emailled me to graciously thank me for this miniature version.
Main Cake Page - Discworld Tutorial - Orc Head Tutorial - Shelob Tutorial - Books - Links
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Page last updated November 27, 2009.
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