3D 2nd place 5
Battle of the Giants
by Gonzuela Bastarache @Gonzuela · submitted Aug 16, 2011 · 2011 contest
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Description
This cake required two things I am severely allergic to: thinking and planning. I wanted my entry to be completely edible so it took a bit of strategizing before I even began making the cake in order to accomplish this.
I initially wanted to create one of my own cake designs but self-teaching yourself how to use Illustrator so you can submit your own Threadless design isn’t exactly as easy as it looks… So I chose the "Battle of the Giants" because it was something I’d want to draw if I could actually draw and I hadn't seen it done before in cake.
Normally I'd make supports throughout the entire cake to the point that it could withstand a hurricane but for this competition my cake planning required a more clever approach. Seriously, Just using the word "clever" gives me a pain in my temple...
Anyway, for this cake I began with a double batch of my super-secret vegan gluten free chocolate cake recipe that I have been perfecting for months. Vegan and gluten free cakes are typically denser and firmer than regular cake anyway so it was perfect for I wanted to do.
I traced the image of the cake design on wax paper with an edible marker (I do have a printer but can never get it to work on purpose... It'll print stuff in the middle of the night and scare the crap out of me but if I actually intend to print something it basically laughs in my face – but I digress). I used this as my guide to measure out and plot the placement of the elements on my cake and to also keep everything to scale which was a lot easier than trying to carve everything freehand and then fitting it together and trimming parts later.
I decided to try something I had never done before which was measure out the body parts of my characters and fashioning little baking trays out of heavy gauge tinfoil to bake them in individually... I thought this might help with the stability of my robot and giant monkey since I didn't plan to use a lot of support and hoped the harder baked edges would help prevent cake breakage. I figured if lobsters and crabs could get around without a skeleton that creating a cake exoskeleton (or my “cake-o-skeleton” as my son calls it) would work as well.
I knew my little gum paste legs wouldn't support the weight of the bodies so I carved out the 8" base cake to make a little seat for them to be supported and used it to also prop my legs and details on.
I initially wanted to make gum paste pegs to hold the body and heads together but they weren't strong enough so I went on a hunt in our candy baskets for leftover candy canes because I knew that the hard sugar candies would make terrific edible surrogate dowels... Unfortunately I didn't have any and had to go to the local specialty store to get "old fashioned sugar sticks" since the cashier said they only had candy canes at Christmas... "What’s the difference", you didn't ask? Yeah, speciality old fashioned sugar sticks are basically a novelty and despite being the exact same thing as a candy cane without the hook they are like 10 times more expensive... Great!
Anyways my "old fashioned sugar sticks" acted as excellent edible dowels and kept everything together. I even covered one in gum paste and used it to support the monkey and robot arms that were sticking up in the air and they were very sturdy. I used melted marshmallow fondant as the glue to hold on the rest of the appendages together because I have learned through accidentally burning it in the past that when it cools it's rock solid and keeps a hold better than melted chocolate.
For the monkey and the robot instead of using fondant alone I did a 50/50 ratio of gum paste so the outside would dry harder and also give more support since I didn't plan to use traditional supports. I let them dry overnight on a metal sieve so they would harden evenly all over and would be able to support the weight of the arms and legs. It worked great and the cake was still moist and delicious inside. I wasn't too concerned with the accuracy of the body parts for the monkey as I made a batch of carob frosting to make the fur to cover the body in... I ended up using 4 toothpicks taped together to drag all over the frosting to give it a fur like appearance since the smallest fork I had still had tines too big and was not giving a good result... Lastly, I hand painted all of the details so I could get variations in colour similar to the original drawing that had different highlights and lowlights.
So there you have it! The cake was completely edible and all cake except for the arms and legs of my characters (which were gum paste) and the little fondant buildings and cloud bubbles and the sugar sticks that I used as supports. Thanks for viewing my entry ?
I initially wanted to create one of my own cake designs but self-teaching yourself how to use Illustrator so you can submit your own Threadless design isn’t exactly as easy as it looks… So I chose the "Battle of the Giants" because it was something I’d want to draw if I could actually draw and I hadn't seen it done before in cake.
Normally I'd make supports throughout the entire cake to the point that it could withstand a hurricane but for this competition my cake planning required a more clever approach. Seriously, Just using the word "clever" gives me a pain in my temple...
Anyway, for this cake I began with a double batch of my super-secret vegan gluten free chocolate cake recipe that I have been perfecting for months. Vegan and gluten free cakes are typically denser and firmer than regular cake anyway so it was perfect for I wanted to do.
I traced the image of the cake design on wax paper with an edible marker (I do have a printer but can never get it to work on purpose... It'll print stuff in the middle of the night and scare the crap out of me but if I actually intend to print something it basically laughs in my face – but I digress). I used this as my guide to measure out and plot the placement of the elements on my cake and to also keep everything to scale which was a lot easier than trying to carve everything freehand and then fitting it together and trimming parts later.
I decided to try something I had never done before which was measure out the body parts of my characters and fashioning little baking trays out of heavy gauge tinfoil to bake them in individually... I thought this might help with the stability of my robot and giant monkey since I didn't plan to use a lot of support and hoped the harder baked edges would help prevent cake breakage. I figured if lobsters and crabs could get around without a skeleton that creating a cake exoskeleton (or my “cake-o-skeleton” as my son calls it) would work as well.
I knew my little gum paste legs wouldn't support the weight of the bodies so I carved out the 8" base cake to make a little seat for them to be supported and used it to also prop my legs and details on.
I initially wanted to make gum paste pegs to hold the body and heads together but they weren't strong enough so I went on a hunt in our candy baskets for leftover candy canes because I knew that the hard sugar candies would make terrific edible surrogate dowels... Unfortunately I didn't have any and had to go to the local specialty store to get "old fashioned sugar sticks" since the cashier said they only had candy canes at Christmas... "What’s the difference", you didn't ask? Yeah, speciality old fashioned sugar sticks are basically a novelty and despite being the exact same thing as a candy cane without the hook they are like 10 times more expensive... Great!
Anyways my "old fashioned sugar sticks" acted as excellent edible dowels and kept everything together. I even covered one in gum paste and used it to support the monkey and robot arms that were sticking up in the air and they were very sturdy. I used melted marshmallow fondant as the glue to hold on the rest of the appendages together because I have learned through accidentally burning it in the past that when it cools it's rock solid and keeps a hold better than melted chocolate.
For the monkey and the robot instead of using fondant alone I did a 50/50 ratio of gum paste so the outside would dry harder and also give more support since I didn't plan to use traditional supports. I let them dry overnight on a metal sieve so they would harden evenly all over and would be able to support the weight of the arms and legs. It worked great and the cake was still moist and delicious inside. I wasn't too concerned with the accuracy of the body parts for the monkey as I made a batch of carob frosting to make the fur to cover the body in... I ended up using 4 toothpicks taped together to drag all over the frosting to give it a fur like appearance since the smallest fork I had still had tines too big and was not giving a good result... Lastly, I hand painted all of the details so I could get variations in colour similar to the original drawing that had different highlights and lowlights.
So there you have it! The cake was completely edible and all cake except for the arms and legs of my characters (which were gum paste) and the little fondant buildings and cloud bubbles and the sugar sticks that I used as supports. Thanks for viewing my entry ?
Baker’s site: facebook.com/kupkaketree
