3D
Your Love Keeps Lifting Me (Muppets)
by Allison Stamm · submitted Nov 5, 2014 · 2014 contest
1 / 29
Description
This cake shall forever be a cake of Firsts.
It is my first ever gravity defying cake, first ever cake to require a trip to the hardware store, first ever project where I've made conscious efforts to ensure that I eat/sleep/take breaks without 3rd party assistance, first time using this particular white chocolate ganache filling, first time trying this particular fondant recipe, first time I have had to remove ALL of the shelving in the refrigerator so that the cake would fit, first time I have consistently not met any of the timeline goals I set for myself to get things finished in advanced, the first time I have not completely beaten myself up for missing the aforementioned self-imposed goals, and my first ever Threadcakes entry.
I ended up ignoring the original Top 20 Designs list I had created for myself, as well as a Facebook poll requesting assistance in choosing my final design, when I finally settled on this one. I knew I couldn't ignore my instincts when I started having dreams about how I would put this thing together. I grew up on the Muppets, and couldn't pass up a chance to pay them homage!
Never before having attempted this caliber of cake engineering combined with a fast-approaching deadline, meant I had to make peace with the possibility that this project could fail gloriously and I wouldn't be able to do it over again. I watched as many tutorials as I could, and repeated a mantra I picked up during pastry school: "Show no fear." Because I guarantee you, cake CAN smell fear.
Planning out the execution of the cake and summoning up the courage to COMMIT to my choices took about 2 weeks. The baking and assembly of the cake took a day or so. The Muppet heads? I had saved them for last, so of course they took FOR.EV.ER! All together, the heads took about 48 hours over 4 days. If I were to do it over again, I would like to spread out those hours over the course of a couple weeks, instead of doing them in a row. My motor skills die an embarrassing death around hour 20. :)
THE SPECS!
- Cake: Chocolate cake, white chocolate ganache filling.
- Edible Structural Stuff: Modeling chocolate, rice cereal treats.
- Inedible Structure Stuff: Plywood presentation boards, metal flanges, PVC pipe connectors, acrylic dowel, some kind of soft & bendy clear hose thing that can easily be cut with scissors to make the acrylic rod fit snuggly into the PVC pipe, floral wire for the balloon strings, a thicker gauge plastic covered wire to support the floral wire structure, wooden tooth picks to stick the heads onto the cake balloon.
- Exterior Decorations: Wilton gel colors, gold luster dust accents, LMF fondant. (Thank you Liz Marek for this invention!)
MISCELLANEOUS SHENANIGANS!
- Did you know that Home Depot cannot cut plywood into circles for you? Yeah, me either, nor could I find any that were pre-cut. They will happily cut things into shapes with right angles for you, but nothing with curves. Soooo, I got to learn how to use a miter saw and electric sander to make those plywood circles! There went another day of my timeline. Definitely worth buying those pre-made if you can find them! (Question for the veterans of the plywood presentation boards... Where DO you find them???)
- I ate about half of the modeling chocolate before I got around to putting it on the cake, and so had to make more when I ran out in the middle of covering the top sphere. I regret nothing.
- It's totally my fault that we haven't gone grocery shopping yet this week. There was no way to put food in the fridge with this gi-hugic cake hibernating in there.
- My mother wants me to save the Muppet figurines and frame them. She may be biased in her opinion of my work. :)
Thanks for stopping by! Have fun, everyone!
Allison
It is my first ever gravity defying cake, first ever cake to require a trip to the hardware store, first ever project where I've made conscious efforts to ensure that I eat/sleep/take breaks without 3rd party assistance, first time using this particular white chocolate ganache filling, first time trying this particular fondant recipe, first time I have had to remove ALL of the shelving in the refrigerator so that the cake would fit, first time I have consistently not met any of the timeline goals I set for myself to get things finished in advanced, the first time I have not completely beaten myself up for missing the aforementioned self-imposed goals, and my first ever Threadcakes entry.
I ended up ignoring the original Top 20 Designs list I had created for myself, as well as a Facebook poll requesting assistance in choosing my final design, when I finally settled on this one. I knew I couldn't ignore my instincts when I started having dreams about how I would put this thing together. I grew up on the Muppets, and couldn't pass up a chance to pay them homage!
Never before having attempted this caliber of cake engineering combined with a fast-approaching deadline, meant I had to make peace with the possibility that this project could fail gloriously and I wouldn't be able to do it over again. I watched as many tutorials as I could, and repeated a mantra I picked up during pastry school: "Show no fear." Because I guarantee you, cake CAN smell fear.
Planning out the execution of the cake and summoning up the courage to COMMIT to my choices took about 2 weeks. The baking and assembly of the cake took a day or so. The Muppet heads? I had saved them for last, so of course they took FOR.EV.ER! All together, the heads took about 48 hours over 4 days. If I were to do it over again, I would like to spread out those hours over the course of a couple weeks, instead of doing them in a row. My motor skills die an embarrassing death around hour 20. :)
THE SPECS!
- Cake: Chocolate cake, white chocolate ganache filling.
- Edible Structural Stuff: Modeling chocolate, rice cereal treats.
- Inedible Structure Stuff: Plywood presentation boards, metal flanges, PVC pipe connectors, acrylic dowel, some kind of soft & bendy clear hose thing that can easily be cut with scissors to make the acrylic rod fit snuggly into the PVC pipe, floral wire for the balloon strings, a thicker gauge plastic covered wire to support the floral wire structure, wooden tooth picks to stick the heads onto the cake balloon.
- Exterior Decorations: Wilton gel colors, gold luster dust accents, LMF fondant. (Thank you Liz Marek for this invention!)
MISCELLANEOUS SHENANIGANS!
- Did you know that Home Depot cannot cut plywood into circles for you? Yeah, me either, nor could I find any that were pre-cut. They will happily cut things into shapes with right angles for you, but nothing with curves. Soooo, I got to learn how to use a miter saw and electric sander to make those plywood circles! There went another day of my timeline. Definitely worth buying those pre-made if you can find them! (Question for the veterans of the plywood presentation boards... Where DO you find them???)
- I ate about half of the modeling chocolate before I got around to putting it on the cake, and so had to make more when I ran out in the middle of covering the top sphere. I regret nothing.
- It's totally my fault that we haven't gone grocery shopping yet this week. There was no way to put food in the fridge with this gi-hugic cake hibernating in there.
- My mother wants me to save the Muppet figurines and frame them. She may be biased in her opinion of my work. :)
Thanks for stopping by! Have fun, everyone!
Allison
