3D
Nesting Dolls
by Deborah Wong @dzswong · submitted Jul 8, 2010 · 2010 contest
1 / 46
Description
Nesting Dolls has been one of my long-standing favorite Threadless designs and when I heard about ThreadCakes, I quickly knew what design I wanted to attempt to create in cake form.
This proved to be no easy task as I crammed in this fun project whenever my 7 month old was sleeping. I even ended up using a plastic fork as my main fondant sculpting tool as my modeling tools were in the closet of my sleeping baby's room.
One of the main goals of this project was to create a completely edible cake, and it started with the ghost. This was going to be the make or break factor as I wanted the ghost to have some free-standing height. I ended up sculpting a ghost out of polymer clay, baking it, making a mold using food-safe temporary mold material, grinding clear mint candies, melting the candy dust down, pouring the molten sugar into the mold (twice, as I had to learn a few lessons from the first casting attempt), pulling out a hard and sturdy sugar ghost, and finally covering her in marshmallow fondant.
Once I knew the ghost would be successful, I started baking a couple of almond flavored pound cakes, sculpted them into the Nesting Dolls, sandwiched some yummy strawberry jam in between the layers, covered them with cream cheese icing, then marshmallow fondant, formed the clothes, underwear, muscles (complete with research on the back and butt muscles), and finally the skeleton.
After painstakingly painting every flower, polka dot, and ligament, I set them on top of a marshmallow fondant covered white chocolate (mixed with some burgundy color, for fun) cake board.
At the end of it all, all 12 hours spliced into 1-3 hour chunks (depending on how fabulously my little girl slept), I took a bite out of my Nesting Dolls and took in the sweet, sweet goodness, leaving their faces now concerned with facing their doom of being devoured. My husband and I both admit, it felt a little cannibalistic, but fantastically so.
This proved to be no easy task as I crammed in this fun project whenever my 7 month old was sleeping. I even ended up using a plastic fork as my main fondant sculpting tool as my modeling tools were in the closet of my sleeping baby's room.
One of the main goals of this project was to create a completely edible cake, and it started with the ghost. This was going to be the make or break factor as I wanted the ghost to have some free-standing height. I ended up sculpting a ghost out of polymer clay, baking it, making a mold using food-safe temporary mold material, grinding clear mint candies, melting the candy dust down, pouring the molten sugar into the mold (twice, as I had to learn a few lessons from the first casting attempt), pulling out a hard and sturdy sugar ghost, and finally covering her in marshmallow fondant.
Once I knew the ghost would be successful, I started baking a couple of almond flavored pound cakes, sculpted them into the Nesting Dolls, sandwiched some yummy strawberry jam in between the layers, covered them with cream cheese icing, then marshmallow fondant, formed the clothes, underwear, muscles (complete with research on the back and butt muscles), and finally the skeleton.
After painstakingly painting every flower, polka dot, and ligament, I set them on top of a marshmallow fondant covered white chocolate (mixed with some burgundy color, for fun) cake board.
At the end of it all, all 12 hours spliced into 1-3 hour chunks (depending on how fabulously my little girl slept), I took a bite out of my Nesting Dolls and took in the sweet, sweet goodness, leaving their faces now concerned with facing their doom of being devoured. My husband and I both admit, it felt a little cannibalistic, but fantastically so.