Sounds Of The Ocean

I guess you could say I'm a bit of an Alex Solis fan? (Understatement!) After turning his "Nature Photography" illustration into cake a few weeks ago, I took a crack at another of his designs. Alex, please keep producing these amazing illustrations so we Threadcakers can continue turning them into cakes :)

I know overly detailed cakes don't photograph well, so I only did about half of the illustration - and even still, it's tough to see all the detail in one photo! This design was definitely a fun challenge. This was the product of a week of work - I worked on it for a couple hours almost every day. (Good thing I work from home!) All the sea flora & fauna are gumpaste. All the cutting & detail work was done with my x-acto knife - indeed, he (yes, it's a 'he!') and I had some solid bonding time. I might have to spring for some real gumpaste tools at some point. But I digress! The painting process was pretty much the same for all the pieces: I started with a coat of vodka + purple coloring paste to seep into all the carvings, wiped off the excess, let it dry, then used a few hues of petal dust + lemon extract to paint the various blue colors.

Here's where it got interesting for me - it didn't seem so obvious at the time, but royal icing decorations turn to GOO if you try to paint them. D'oh! I'd planned to do the jellyfish tentacles, coral, and a few other things out of royal icing since I didn't think I'd be able to do it with gumpaste, but I quickly moved to plan B after seeing the tentacles turn into a heap of unrecognizable sadness. So, there's a little less coral than I'd planned, but sometimes ya just gotta roll with the punches! I had a few other mishaps along the way which resulted in broken fish and a shattered plate, but all's well that ends well, right?

I took the fish-clad, marbled fudge cake to a dinner gathering, and it was warmly welcomed! It went great with ice cream and good company :)