Happiness is Fleeting

In April my husband had brain surgery, thus I feel it is okay for me to laugh at zombies. A lot. I love this design. Every time I look at it I laugh!

The process: first I created the zombie and fly-away-arm and balloon with royal icing. After sketching the design, I painted over it with a toothpick and royal icing. I soon realized that there was little chance of zombie survival with such delicate painting. I color flowed in the outlines for more support. Then I tried painting again--it didn't work out very well. I just happened to have an edible ink writing pen on hand, so I drew in the details of the zombie's face, hand, and clothes. Note: I made three zombies just in case of breakage, as royal icing is known for.
Then I chose a background. The gray is lovely in the original design, but a bit dull to be turned in to a cake form. I decided to use Vincent VanGogh's "Wheat fields with crows" as a background. VanGogh has excellent color, and this particular landscape was perfect to surround poor Mr.Zombie.

The canvas in this case is a two tier cake: the first was three tiers with chocolate pastry cream. This worked out perfectly, as it was elongated, and just tall enough to accompany poor Zombie and the background I chose. The smaller tier was also perfect for the sky, and the arm/balloon to float away.

After smooth frosting with butter cream the two tiers, I let it set in the fridge. I have been lucky to find a brand of colored cocoa butter. It is awesome to paint with on top of butter cream! No bubbling, no peeling, and it is easy to work with. I painted the scene inspired by VanGogh. Oops, I forgot the crows! I think it still works--maybe even better, because poor Mr.Zombie is emphasized without black birds flying everywhere.
The process from beginning to end with creating, waiting to dry, baking, waiting to cool, frosting, waiting to set, took me a total of three days.

After painting, all that was left was positioning the dried royal icing forms on to the cake. I invited friends over for "cake night", and we happily dug in to poor Mr.Zombie's surroundings!