Hooded

I really wanted to do this design because I thought it would be challenging and fun! I love the flow of it and wanted to capture that in my cake. I made the bird before hand so the wings had plenty of time to dry. I then constructed the stand and baked my cakes (three full vanilla sheet cakes). I used white chocolate ganache for the filling (mmmmm!)

Stacking and carving the cake was a little crazy and I wasn't sure it was going to work until I started smoothing things out and could really visualize the shape of the head and shoulders (did I mention it was a 90 degree day with no air conditioning!?) I removed all the shelves from my fridge so she could chill out for a while before adding fondant and modeling chocolate for her face. Here total height was 2' 4" from base to bird wing.

I wanted the cake to appear to be on as thin of a base as possible so I covered the base of the form in all white fondant. I think it worked out pretty well but if I did it again, I would make the structure even taller.

It took me about 8 hours to mold her face until I was happy with the proportion. I painted on her eyes with oil based food color as well as her lips and eyebrows. After chilling in the fridge again overnight, I applied strips of thin fondant for her hair and her "clothes" which went fairly fast. Only a couple hours. I made the flowers out of isomalt (only my second time trying sugar flowers) and I got a nice blister for my efforts but I think the final flowers looked ok. I wish the one on her forehead was a bit smaller.

Since it was just my husband and I, we had some fun cutting her up and devouring her head haha. Sounds like we are zombies! I have always loved vanilla cake so it was no hard sacrifice on our part. The cake was still super moist and yummy after being in the fridge for two days!