New Space Found

Another year, another cake. I had this design on my shortlist for a while. I liked the colours and the flow of the design. It always seems less complex in my mind though than in reality. It took a lot longer than I had imagined. I sculpted and cut the pieces out of gumpaste (some parts of the wings of the phoenix character I used blue coloured modelling chocolate). Some of the gumpaste I pre-coloured and for some parts I just used white because it needed to be painted later. For the painting I used food colours - gel, paste and powder - diluted with vodka. I used a printout of the design as my guide. It took about a week to make all the pieces.

The cake was just a rectangular chocolate with a raspberry swiss meringue buttercream, covered in black fondant. Can I just say I hate black fondant! No matter how fast you work or how greased up it is with shortening to start with, it never seems to go on without cracking or giving an "elephant skin" appearance. Also it made photographing in natural light also difficult because there always seemed to be a side that reflected - and hence turned out lighter.

After the cake was covered I then transferred the pieces onto the cake - which took a lot longer than I thought it would - I can't remember what time I started that but it ended at like 3am! The pieces were fixed onto the cake using just water. My favourite piece I think was the tiger.
The following day I had my family over for tea and cake. The rest I took to work. It seems like everyone's favourite was the tiger - it was the only piece left over at the end (I forgot to take a photo of that).

And that's all I have to say about that!