I severly under estimated this cake design and faltered repeatedly with it... I've never been good with strategizing and planning; and wanting my entry to be completely edible - but to also wanting to experiment and try new techniques at the last minute (when I had very little time) was an egregious oversight on my part to say the least.
Threadcakes is always a real challenge because the way cakies like myself would normally make cakes like these would be to to super re-inforce everything with pvc or wire structures, etc, but the "everything edible" aspect throws a wrench into the way I would normally do things... which makes it frustratingly fun and challenging. Does that even make sense? I'm really exhausted right now so if I even manage to string together coherent sentences I'm going to be proud of myself.
Here's a bit about my process:
This year I tried out "Elvis Presley's Favourite Pound cake" recipe. I have never felt a cake so dense in my life. I've lifted children lighter than this cake. I am pretty sure it could stop a punch from Mike Tyson. The density made it very solid and great for supporting all the weight of the decorations and didn't even sag like I was worried it would. It also tasted pretty good too and surprisingly no one suffered broken teeth.
I traced out my Threadcake design on a sheet of paper so I could measure stuff and get accurate placement and sizing. It worked better at first before I zombied out and almost feel asleep on my cake. Never decorate on zero sleep, folks!
When baking my cakes I fashioned little baking trays out of heavy gauge tinfoil to bake my ballons individually and then baked a couple of round cakes for the base. I'm glad I baked extra because my initial plan to have the balloons floating in mid air fell flatter than a lead balloon. Ha! See what I did there? Good, because I don't. Can someone please explain my joke to me?
I started on the Muppet mounatin first by carving out the basic shape. I made the mountin curve out more in the place where I wanted to have my balloon biker scientists so I could simply press them onto the cake to hold them up. I then took small pieces of fondant and accentuated the faces on the rock cliffs. I smoothed everything out with buttercream and then rolled a super thin piece of fondant to cover the mountain. Once I had the entire cake covered in fondant I used a large brush to gently press the fondant over the faces and rest of the cake. I then used sculpting tools to define the features on the faces.
I covered the balloons in coloured gum paste and let them harden. I also made the parachute with Animal out of gumpaste as well.
I had this brilliant idea to make all my supports out of blue Isomalt and attach them to the cake and have the balloons floating like magic...HA HA HA! Oh how naieve I was hours ago! I burned myself on the boiling sugar and couldn't pull it fast enough to shape it the way I wanted... and melted my paintbrush.... don't ask. So what did I do? I improvised. I used some cake to build up a blue wall for my sky and inserted some left over sugar sticks I had from last year to hold up the sky into the cake and then used more sugar sticks to hold up my balloons. I have a feeling isomalt will be the bane of my existence! My cake certainly didn't turn out the way I hoped but I had invested so much time into it that there was no way I wasn't going to finish it unless I broke every knuckle in both my hands.
I outlined and hand painted the details on the mountain so I could get variations in colour similar to the original drawing that had different highlights and lowlights. I also outlined the balloons and parachute and added some black low lights to the trees like the original drawing as well. I made some teeny tiny characters for my hot-air balloons and made the guys on the bike and voila, the cake was done! The cake was completely edible and all cake except for the fondant and gumpaste characters. I would write more but the clock is ticking and if I don't submit soon I'm going to miss the deadline!!! Thanks for viewing my entry! :-)
Source:
http://www.threadcakes.com/entries/view/1552