Marinota

I don’t think I would have attempted this design if I wasn’t dared to. I immediately said ‘no’ but after some thought…the seed had been planted…and couldn’t resist so I accepted the challenge. I could see it as a cake but whether or not my ideas transferred from my brain into my limbs was another story!
I imagined it as being mainly carved out and one solid structure with minimal supports required. As it turned out I didn’t end up dowelling it as it was pretty solid and only measured up to 10 inches to the top of the head.

Day 1: baked up a series of cakes (marbled vanilla/chocolate) and piled them up (filled with basic vanilla icing) and stuck them in the fridge to thoroughly chill before I attempted to carve. I had blown up the picture on the computer and traced it in order to make a sort of stencil to keep on track with proportions.
It took me about 3 hours with chill time in the fridge in between to carve the general shape I wanted. I tried to build up some areas with extra cake/icing mix but then ended up shaving them off after comparison to my “stencil”.

Day 2: My ganache turned out a little firmer than I would have liked so it took longer to get it on as I had to work in smaller areas. It wasn’t my day for ganache-making. The white for the flesh areas turned out too thin. I ended up mixing it with the dark and it looked a little shabby but it did the job. It took about 3 hrs for me to get it covered to my satisfaction and it looked more like a Buddha than the intended design. I wasn’t giving up though! I was sick of the smell of chocolate however and couldn’t wait to get the thing covered! I used a commercial pre-coloured black fondant for the base covering.
I started to sculpt the woman’s shoulder, hand and face first, which as predicted took quite some time. I spent a good 3 or 4 hours on it and still was not satisfied with it.


Day 3: Had to go to work (duh-oh) so only had a few hours beforehand to continue on the face. I ended up shaving the nose off and repositioning it as I had placed it a little too high on the face. Basically I spent another 3 hours trying to finish off the face and admittedly I still wasn’t completely happy with it.

Day 4: I pretty much spent 12 hours on this day building up the details and adding the swans. I used mainly modeling chocolate as it was nice and shiny like feathers (the fondant looked dull) and it rolled out super thing so I could lay a light layer on top of the fondant. I did however use a mix of fondant with some tylose powder kneaded into it, to make the swan necks/bills, so they would firm and remain upright. The only inedible parts of the cake are the three toothpicks used to support the necks of the three rear swans (forgot to take a photo of them before I placed them).
I used straight gumpaste to make the butterflies and added all the painted details with edible food colour gel/markers/powder (which I did on day 5, which was also the closing date of the contest!).
I didn’t get a chance to take the final photo of the cutting with the people who the cake is going to so I had hack in and slice myself a piece (they’ll understand)!

I am overall happy with the outcome although I failed to really capture the character’s expression. Oh well! Maybe next time! I quite enjoyed working with modeling chocolate as it is quite forgiving and allows a smooth finish.