Ghost

I love this design; In fact the t-shirt is on its way to my house as I write.

I started with a moist chocolate sheet carved into the basic shape. I added more cake to further build up the figure. Taking a hint from another Threadcaker(sorry I can't remember which entry the technique was in) I used a mixture of cake crumbs and icing to build up the hair, hands, and other details. (Much tastier than building it up w/fondant).

To ice I made a chocolate syrup-based fudge icing. With all the detail it was a huge pain to ice. It crusted over too fast, so the icing didn't really want to stick to it; but I figured with the heat it would adhere after awhile.

After the initial layer of fondant was on the cake I started painting w/food color and vodka. This time I used food color designed for airbrush, which worked very nicely- no digging around with a million toothpicks. I would paint a section with one color, then wipe off excess with q-tips or paper towqel- then continue with another color. Along the way I added more fondant layers so the finished cake would have a good feeling of depth.

I must've tried to get the eyes right 4 or 5 times, and finally had to call it good enough. I first had wanted to do them 3-d but she just ended up looking very surprised:)

My original plan was to cover the board with royal icing- but when I got to that point I just did not feel like making any. I decided to go the bass akwards route of covering the board with fondant after the cake was done; it was a perfect way to use up all the bits of different colored fondant leftover from other Threadcakes entries. Since I'd be painting it black I wasn't worried about the seams showing.

Even if my ghost isn't as pretty as the original I think it looks pretty cool. I'm gonna take it to a barbeque tomorrow- can't wait:)