This tough cookie is a warlock gnome in World of Warcraft, capable of kicking your ass with a single glance. Or so I’m told. All the gears and pipes are inspired by gnome engineering.
This was commissioned by an awesome coworker of mine for his friend’s birthday (they are both geeky homosexuals). I was given a marvelous instruction for this cake: “Make it really gay.”
Now that’s a fun license. Now, besides the shimmery pinks and purples and cursive writing, this cake holds a very special surprise. The vanilla-almond cake within is marbled in Mardi Gras rainbow colors! Each layer is filled with raspberry preserves.
I’ll do a tutorial some time on doing marbled cakes like this. It’s really a pretty straightforward manual process, but a fun one. I need to do more of these. The other ones I have here is the Dead Cow Cake and the Aerialist Cake.
The drawing on top is hand-painted. If you want to do something like that, draw what you want (correct scale) on a piece of paper (I just use regular lined school paper, since it’s lightweight and somewhat see-through. Tracing paper would be excellent). Lay it on the fondant, then use a pin to poke little dots along the lines of the drawing, so you have a guide to use to ice/paint over.
I mentioned this in the Steampunk cake post, but the metallic paint is made used Luster Dust, which comes is a wide array of colors. It’s a powder, which gives a nice shimmery look when applied dry, or you can mix it with a tiny bit of clear grain alcohol to make an edible metallic paint. It’s fun to play with, though a bit pricey and rummaging through the binfuls at my local supply store is a horribly addictive and expensive pleasure. There are a lot of gorgeous colors out there! Not only the shiny stuff, but edible glitters and even matte colors. I am starting to really like the possibilities with the color dusts - you can get a lot of that subtlety and depth that a really good airbrush artist can manage, without the airbrushing equipment and experience. In this particular cake, obviously I didn’t utilize all that, but I will for a cake someday!
Cody | 09-Feb-09 at 4:38 pm | Permalink
Not only was this cake adorable, but it was YUMMY!
the wait staff at the restaurant was amazed and wanted to know where I got it.
The rainbow explosion inside was perfect, the birthday boy was trying to figure out how it was done.
Thanks for the great cake!
loved it.
Shana | 25-Jun-09 at 3:27 pm | Permalink
Amazing! I love your cakes!
Rachel C | 26-Jul-09 at 1:48 pm | Permalink
I LOVE this cake!! It is soo cute, and being a girl plus a WoW gamer it would be PERFECT for my upcoming birthday!! Please tell us how you did the beautiful marbling inside!!!
Lori | 27-Jul-09 at 10:08 am | Permalink
I should do a tutorial sometime. It’s a very manual process, but really pretty straightforward.
Divide the cake batter into separate bowls, one for each color you want to use. Add the dyes to each bowl as appropriate and make sure they’re each well-mixed. Keep in mind that the colors will often intensify when baked.
Then, using spoons for each color, drop spoonfuls one at a time of random colors into the prepared cake pan. Think about the layering vertically and how you’d like those colors to show. For the cow cake I left it with just blocks of chocolate and vanilla, and did not swirl it. It depends on the effect you want.
If it is a very deep pan, then pause when you’ve got half the batter in and use a clean spoon to gently swirl the colors together a little. Be subtle, go slow, and stir very modestly lest it mix together into mud. But you’ll see the swirly pattern showing up. Then fill up the rest of the batter in this one-colored-spoonful at a time way, and do some more gentle swirling. Move the spoon up and down as well as just around, to get some vertical swirls as well. Touch the sides of the pans occasionally. After you’ve done this a couple times you’ll learn what techniques work for you.
Then, baked as usual! I always trim the whole outer ’skin’ of the cake so there’s no browned layer. Then when to slice the layers for the cake, mix up their order - even turn some upside down. It adds extra randomization for when the cake is finished and cut into. I usually pay attention to where colors are so I can avoid large patches of the same color on several layers.
You can even do this to marble flavors, like chocolate and raspberry cake, or orange and vanilla cake! Options are limitless. Enjoy! Post up the link to whatever you make, I’d love to see it!