Clever Cake Studio

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!

This cake is for a Bridal Shower before the couple are whisked away to Vegas.  It’s a three-layer chocolate cake with a rich Grand Marnier buttercream filling.  I fashioned it off a poker chip… kind of a fat one of my own design.  Perhaps I should have made it look like a couple stacked chips, that would have been good.

I made this cake and the WoW Gnome cake in the same evening, so I’m rather proud of myself.  I did the baking ahead, but the layering and covering and decorating was all in an evening, and I even got to bed before midnight.  I think I’m getting better at this!  My first posts are all about crying all the time in frusteration.  Knock on wood, but this seems to be getting easier.

This is the first wedding cake I’ve done.  These are obviously daunting because of how important everything is - there are around 150 guests and a tight deadline.  This cake had to travel to another city an hour or so away, so it needed to be structurally sound.  Like with any cake I’ve ever done, there were many lessons in it for me and things I now know to do differently.

The bottom tier is lemon cake with a creamy lemon curd filling.  The second is german chocolate cake with coconut pecan filling, which from the bride’s post-wedding review sounded like it was the crowd favorite.  The top two tiers are vanilla cake with banana creme filling.

This was also my very first attempt at sugarpaste flowers, which are time-consuming but rather wonderful to do. I have a lot of respect for the artists who can make amazingly intricate and realistic sugar flowers.

I have a few progress photos to show how to smooth buttercream.  Basically, after the crumb coat, then the final, thicker base layer, stick it in the fridge to cool for a half hour.  Then, you go and fill a mug with hot water.  Take a spatula knife, dip it in, then tap off excess.  With a very light touch, brush the flat of the knife upwards, just skimming the buttercream.  You’ll feel the buttercream go slick and you can smooth a small area this way, dipping the knife regularly.  You may get a lot of moisture, so make sure to tap off excess water from the knife and make sure you have enough time to let it sit to dry off if there’s too much.

I built up some frosting at the top to support the flowers.

Then, once it’s ready, I wrapped real deep blue ribbon around the base of each tier - no tape is needed, as the frosting clings to the ribbon just fine.  This gave it a nice look, though fondant is a better choice if you can roll and cut it precisely.  It just makes the cake cutting easier.  Once the ribbon is on, I started one the pearl border, and the dots.  Then, arrange the flowers on top.

Some lessons:  If the cake is going to be traveling, then opt for fondant-covered instead of buttercream.  I like to do just buttercream whenever possible - not that it’s the slightest bit easier, but most people don’t like eating fondant.  However, fondant would have been sturdier and held up better to the vibrations of a road trip.  There was a bit of settling, so the buttercream walls weren’t as smooth and flat.

I also would pick a larger base board.  This one was two inches bigger in diameter than the bottom tier, but I’d like to have more space to grip so it would be easier to pick up.  Little details like that - lesson learned.

Still, I was told that it was tasty and the bride was satisfied, so it’s a success.  Next time I’ll know even better.

Now with added instructions on how to make your own corset cake!

This is my first attempt at a corset cake, and it came with many learnings (I made a lot of mistakes). I shall share these with you, so that we may better the world together by bringing forth greater sexy cakes.

First of all, do NOT use a soft cake recipe or a cake mix for a cake that needs to hold its shape. Even if it’s not very tall and doesn’t have a lot to support, you should really stick with a recipe that’s between cake and pound cake, with a fine crumb (texture). Because fondant is heavy, and soft cakes just aren’t made for it.  Do some searches for doctored cake mixes or just use a favorite moist pound cake.

You can look at the original shape of the cake with only the crumb-coat right here compared to the completed cake at top, and you may notice how much bigger the boobs used to be. That poor torso went from a D to an A-cup, due to these two problems. Likely just having the better cake recipe would have helped tremendously. I also might consider doing the fondant over the boobs separately to get the shape just right. It’s an idea, anyhow. I plan on doing another corset cake in the future, and hope that it will have a whole lot more outrageous va-VOOM to it

Secondly, I envy those of you with air conditioning. Even with a bunch of fans blowing around, I realized very quickly that trying to decorate a cake in the heat of summer is a very unpleasant experience. The fondant is softer, which makes it easier to work with, but then it wasn’t holding it’s ‘pinstripe’ look as well.

So anyhow. On to the fun stuff!

Preparing the Cake:  This was made with several rectangular sheet cakes layered with buttercream and stacked together firmly, placed on a flat cardboard sheet, then wrapped in plastic wrap and frozen overnight.  Freezing locks in moisture and makes carving it MUCH easier!  As a hint, make it taller that you think you really need, and you can use the trimmings to create some added height for the tummy and breasts to avoid a lot of waste.

Carving:  I use a non-serrated, very sharp chef’s knife for most of the carving, plus some smaller knives for more detailed work.  I also have a soft brush (make sure the bristles won’t come out) and a can of compressed air to remove excess crumbs.  I wanted to really make this feel 3D, as a lot of corset cakes I’ve seen tend to be rather boxy and the front is too flat.  Don’t be afraid of curves!  She should be well rounded at all sides, no sudden angles.  I added an extra strip of cake down the stomach to carve into a more realistic shape and was really happy with it, as well as the curve of the hips and how well the fondant hugged them.  Check out photos of curvy burlesque ladies to get an idea of the classic corset shapes, there are many options to choose from! Some highlight the seperate breast bumps, others are a more solid bosum.

Cake is forgiving - if you trim off a bit too much, you can use buttercream ‘glue’ to pad some more cake back.  It’s messy work!  If the cake is getting soft and crumbly, put it back in the freezer for awhile.

Remember that the buttercream top layer and the fondant are going to soften all the curves and angles, so be dramatic with the cake shape.  Indentations should be deeper than you really want them, and differences in curves/angles more drastic.  Otherwise, when the fondant is laid on, you’ll lose all those careful details that make it more realistic!

Buttercream Top Cover:  Once you’ve got the cake shape you want, let it freeze a bit longer, then use the compressed air and/or brush to remove excess crumbs gently.  Cover it in a thin layer of buttercream (crumb coat), chill it, then cover it in about 1/4″ of buttercream.  You shouldn’t see any crumbs now on the cake or the board, and make sure to clean up your workspace.  At this point, if you want to decorate the cake with buttercream, do so!  My further instructions are for fondant.

Coloring Fondant:  As I did not pre-dye the fondant (which may be the best way to get a clean look, so I recommend that), I had to paint it afterwards.  The painting (done in this photo by Pip, who was helping me that day) on this cake is just food coloring (the concentrated gels, not the usual stuff from the grocery) and water, which leaves it shiny but tacky and difficult to work with. You should use tiny amounts of grain alcohol instead to thin the dye.  This is where having a food-grade airbrush would be kinda awesome, but oh well!  I get new tools slowly.  You can also pick up some of those cans of food dye sprays they sell at many grocery stores now for cake decorating.  Or try finding some edible luster dusts I work with what I have.

Fondant:  I recommend making your own fondant or buying a non-Wilton variety, which will taste better and be much less stiff to work with.  If you use Wilton, pre-blend it with some added vanilla and almond extracts to improve the flavor. If you pre-dye the fondant, you’ll have to use your own judgment as to how much of each color to use - that’s partly why I just did it all in white, and then painted it afterwards.  I had a limited amount of fondant that day and didn’t want any to get wasted.

I got a roller (a Wilton brand tool) that let me do this pinstrip effect. You’ll want to press deeply, because of how it flattens a bit when painted or laid out over the cake. There are many other things you can do to the fondant before applying it to the cake to add design elements, like stamps or texture mats.  It really ups the realism, so play around with some fondant and various tools to see what textures you can do.  Even stuff around the house can work to mimic the look of different fabrics or materials on fondant.

I made a guess on the shape, and rolled it out carefully onto the cake to avoid air bubbles - it’s more important to get the edge on the top right, as you can trim the edges at the bottom of the cake much more easily.  The second one was easier, since I learned from the first about what shape to cut.  Don’t forget to roll on the pinstripes (or whatever other design/texture, if you’re pre-stamping!). Once you’ve laid down both side pieces, then make the middle (which should be slightly thicker at the top to allow for stretching it over the chest).  Don’t worry about make it too long, the top and bottoms are easy to trim.  It should slightly overlap onto the side panels.  You can use scissors to trim the extra, but let it stay slightly overlapped because the fondant will settle and may slide apart. You’ll have to do some funny wiggling and gentle stretching of the fondant to get it to ‘hug’ the breast mounds in the way you want.

For the bottom of the corset, I just used a panel of fondant.  You could also just use dark buttercream, as the fondant sometimes slides off at such sharp angles.  The top part, you have some options.  As I was focusing on the article of clothing, I just filled in the top with ‘whipped cream’ looking fondant.  The disembodied breasts seemed weird to me, but you could make breasts if you like. I’ve even seen someone just squeeze a couple of oranges there!  What nice, healthy breasts those make

Moving the Cake:  I would move the cake onto it’s final tray at this point, if it’s not already.  Keep it on the cardboard!  Trim the board till it’s tucked under the layer of fondant.  Place a couple little dollops of stiff buttercream onto the middle of the display tray, and then place the cake with it’s cardboard bottom on it.  Wiggle it gently to let it settle down, and the buttercream should keep it in place.  Fix up the fondant if you need to get it looking the way you like.  The cardboard should not be visible (any visible areas can be covered up in decorating).

Decorating:  Once the fondant is on, and had a half hour to finish settling, then first check it over to trim any extra fondant hanging over, or see where you need to hide any areas that the fondant isn’t covering.  Use decorating to hide the flaws - make lace, braided ropes, etc, with fondant, or pipe buttercream edgings, and so on.  Flowers, jewels, naughty toys (making a riding crop ahead of time out of sugarpaste would be amazing)… The options are endless.  I was under a time restraint so went for simplicity.  The little red studs/gems is a sparkling red gel icing.  If I had more time, I would have piped on some delicate lacing work in the center panel instead.

Show Me! Post up a link to your results.  I’d love to see them! :)  Feel free to ask any questions.