Clever Cake Studio

So, I hear you like mudkips?

This is probably the hardest cake I’ve ever made up to this point. I made mistakes and can see where I could have done better, but I learned a lot from it. I also know better now that I need to come up with a good cake recipe that’s closer to pound cake for sculpted cakes.
The photos aren’t great, but I may have more coming. I had to assemble the fins on-site, so I didn’t take photos at home first. Then I forgot my camera. Luckily, my husband could take photos with his cell phone.

This cake is vanilla, with a strawberry filling I made using organic preserves, fresh strawberries and confectioner’s sugar. Apparently, mudkips taste like strawberry-vanilla. I’m told this is standard knowledge.

The fins are fondant, but I didn’t let them dry and harden for a long enough time, so I ended up using those white sticks as part of the design so they would have the support they needed. Maybe I should have used gum paste, since that hardens considerably better. Live and learn!

This last photo was taken by the person it was made for. It looks so dramatic!

Another morbid addition to the portfolio. This one is a dead cow all dressed up with garnish for serving. Like some turkeys, I placed a bow at the head-cutting site.

The cake itself looks like the outside, being made of dark chocolate and white cake baked together in random chunks of each. Covered in either vanilla or chocolate icing and fondant. Here’s a shot from behind. I was thinking of some trussed-up turkeys that sometimes have bows or flowers or something as the head-chopping site, which is why there’s a bow.

A friend had requested a cow cake and left it open for me to use that inspiration. Originally, the body was longer and I was going to have the head mounted, but it stubbornly refused to hold up the head, which plopped forward and broke that part of the cake. I spent maybe a half hour or so trying to regain the will to try something different - it was really annoying, I was practically done at that point! A cake disaster is always depressing. My husband suggested having something like this, so we asked the birthday girl,and she actually found that to be a hilarious and awesome idea, so I managed to redo all the fondant and finish it in time.

A very fun cake to make. Not a terrible likeness, but at least recognizable!

The roll and the head are rainbow cake, and the roll has blueberry-white chocolate ganache filling.

A friend of mine joined me one day when I was assembling the king, and made this little katamari roll and prince to go with it. Blame the prince’s bad paint job on me! ^^’ Too bad I didn’t have anything but toothpicks to use for the limbs.

The book is supposed to be reminiscent of the CRC Handbook for Chem and Physics (87th Edition). It is for the birthday of an awesome chemical engineer at Nintendo.

It’s made with white cake and chocolate filling. The red Erlenmeyer flash is raspberry with some raspberry liquor in the cake and preserves between the layers. The yellow acid bottle is, naturally, lemon cake with lemon curd filling. They are all covered in buttercream and fondant, and yes, the stopper in the acid bottle is a separate piece and can be lifted out.

The notepad and pen are gum paste, and the various bookmarks and the stirrer are fondant. The only thing that isn’t edible is the tray. The notepad lists several toxic chemicals and, on the edge, a small grocery list.

I made some poor attempts at doing writing on the spine, but my skills at such things are, alas, lacking. I need to buy some fondant stamps for that. And metallic cake paint. And confectioner’s glaze, which would have made the bottles awesomely glassy.

Someone suggested I do a Lovecraft inspired cake. The idea intrigued me.

Here is Cthulhu rising from the oceans, using a convenient little island with a tower on it to climb up. The base was cherry-chip cake, the island and tower a mix of cherry chip and yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Also used small chocolate ‘pearls’ as rocks. Cthulhu himself is all fondant, with two chocolate pearls that I seeped in red dye for eyes.

This second photo is at the party… a chocolate truffle was added to the top. Seems like reasonable motivation to wake an elder god. There were really, really good truffles, made by a friend.