3D
Portrait of a Martian
by Melissa Normand Brouillette · submitted Oct 20, 2014 · 2014 contest
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Description
I have recently jumped back into the cake world after a very long absence. So much has changed! What is fondant!? Haha! When I first read about this contest I thought no way can I compete but I headed to the website to check out the T-shirts anyway. As soon as I saw this T-shirt I wanted to enter. I loved these aliens on Sesame Street when I was a kid. I printed out a picture and let it roll around in my brain for a few days. With every cake I make I sketch it out first and figure out what I'll need to make it. with that info all set I got to baking.
First I baked the cakes- 1 9x13 chocolate, 1 9x13 peanut butter, 1 4"& 6" round chocolate. Along with the cake I made chocolate ganache, candy melt spheres, Royal Icing, peanut butter buttercream and MMF. It took me a few days to get motivated to attempt this cake. I jumped in with both feet and started stacking cakes on top of one another, I held it together with buttercream. Carving cake is new for me. I've never done it and it was scary. I just kept cutting until I was happy with the shape and then into the fridge it went for a couple days. When I took it out again something didn't look right (good thing I didn't let my kids eat the off cuts!), so I "glued" some cake back on and it looked better. I put the first coat of ganache on and put it back in the fridge. The second coat went on and I was much happier with how it looked. It had to spend some time in the fridge because of other orders I had to complete. Once I was ready to finish this cake nothing stopped me. I added the small piece of black fondant for the mouth and started to roll out the MMF. This was a difficult task because I'm 4'11" and it's a job to roll out large pieces of fondant. I had my son and daughters boyfriend help roll it out completely and help me pick it up to cover the cake. Back into the fridge it went. I finally said "I want this out of my fridge!" and put the rest of the pieces together.
This process took about 3-4 weeks. I'm not exactly happy with it (I'm a perfectionist) and I know that some really great cake artists are entering. My cake looks like it belongs on Cake Wrecks compared to these awesome cakes! Never the less,I decided to enter it. I learned a lot and hopefully next year will be better.
First I baked the cakes- 1 9x13 chocolate, 1 9x13 peanut butter, 1 4"& 6" round chocolate. Along with the cake I made chocolate ganache, candy melt spheres, Royal Icing, peanut butter buttercream and MMF. It took me a few days to get motivated to attempt this cake. I jumped in with both feet and started stacking cakes on top of one another, I held it together with buttercream. Carving cake is new for me. I've never done it and it was scary. I just kept cutting until I was happy with the shape and then into the fridge it went for a couple days. When I took it out again something didn't look right (good thing I didn't let my kids eat the off cuts!), so I "glued" some cake back on and it looked better. I put the first coat of ganache on and put it back in the fridge. The second coat went on and I was much happier with how it looked. It had to spend some time in the fridge because of other orders I had to complete. Once I was ready to finish this cake nothing stopped me. I added the small piece of black fondant for the mouth and started to roll out the MMF. This was a difficult task because I'm 4'11" and it's a job to roll out large pieces of fondant. I had my son and daughters boyfriend help roll it out completely and help me pick it up to cover the cake. Back into the fridge it went. I finally said "I want this out of my fridge!" and put the rest of the pieces together.
This process took about 3-4 weeks. I'm not exactly happy with it (I'm a perfectionist) and I know that some really great cake artists are entering. My cake looks like it belongs on Cake Wrecks compared to these awesome cakes! Never the less,I decided to enter it. I learned a lot and hopefully next year will be better.