My Pet Human

As luck would have it; my boyfriend's work is having a cake raffle for Relay for Life as part of their company pic-a-nic this weekend. You can imagine my reaction. I decided to try and do a few smaller-scale cakes and kill multiple birds with one stone: build up some (much needed) good karma for myself, get a cuople of Threadless entries, hopefully get some money for a good cause, and possibly get my boyfriend an extra day of vacation (1 cake= 1 chance at vac. day).

Since so much of the decorating needs to be done close to when you need to serve it; I decided to try and get as much as possible done before hand. As luck would have it the heat and humidity took a brief break last weekend so I baked a bunch of cake and threw it in the freezer. I also made a big batch of buttercream and a batch of fondant.

For my second cake for the picnic I made a lemon cake w/chopped white chocolate mixed in the batter. I filled the base layer w/ lemon pie filling and then mixed equal parts pie filling with my homemade buttercream (delicious!)

Early in the week I started using gumpaste to make the robots arms, head , feet, the girl, and record player. after those were dry (2 days later i think)I painted them w/ food color/vodka. I was trying to figure out how to make the arms and stuff w/out already having the robot body done when I remembered making play-doh at home when we were little. I whipped together a batch and molded into approximately the size and shape I was going to make the body. This worked pretty well; except that wjere the gumpaste had touched the ply-doh it was a slimy-gloopy mess. I scraped those bits off, but they never completely dried out.

When it was time to complete the cake I filled and iced the bottom layer, and covered it with a white=chocolate fondant. Then I carved the robot body, iced and covered that too. I had to cut parts to make the fondant lay flat, but I knew I'd be covering it w/more fondant details anyway. After I put the body on the cake base I painted it.

Then I placed the gumpaste pieces on the cake (gluing with royal icing)and finished painting the details.

I think it turned out super cute-just hope it survives the humidity:)