3D
Billy Says It's Haunted
by Jennifer Bratko @Jennifer · submitted Aug 16, 2010 · 2010 contest
1 / 17
Description
And because I am a glutton for punishment, this cake is all stuff I’ve never done before. And I am super stubborn and want to make everything from scratch, so only about a marble size of commercial gumpaste and ½ c. of store bought piping gel was used in this whole thing.
1st, It’s over 10” high, and has no structural support, meaning this 100% edible. 2nd, I’ve never really done cake sculpting before and little did I know it would be like hitting myself in the head repeatedly. 3rd, I’ve never attempted fondant detail like brick, wood and siding.
And 4th, I wanted to make it glow.
I prepared in advance and made a batch of marshmallow fondant. The next day I started with my trusty homemade chocolate cake recipe and made a 15x12 cake. When it was done baking it was 2” high. After it cooled I quartered it and stacked it using only a little bit of Swiss meringue buttercream. I knew since I was not using any supports I didn’t want a ton of buttercream between my layers and my cake sliding all over the place (even though that happened a little bit).
After I stacked it I carved it up as best as I could and crumb-iced it. Then came messing with all the fondant. I have never really tried to tint my fondant brown, and now I know why I should have made or bought chocolate fondant, because it came out a fantastic shade of ka ka. But whatever, I went with it on the lower ½ of the cake. The roof I decided to cover with white fondant and then paint it brown with gel color/vodka, which came out loads better.
The columns and porch roof are marshmallow fondant with a little gumpaste mixed in.
The chimney is all fondant, but the bird bath was a pain without using support. In the end I used a spaghetti noodle and gumpaste. Not even real spaghetti, but whole wheat spaghetti. Which is super fragile. Sigh. In the end it stayed up but it took lots and lost of tries.
The top floor, I guess the turret? Is cake moistened with Malibu rum (cuz by that point I needed a drink). I molded the cake paste, then covered it in fondant. No support is holding this baby up. Behold the power of rum, baby!
The fence was a major challenge, I couldn’t get a thing to stay without using the normal supports like toothpicks, so I reverted back to my kindergarden days and painted spaghetti noodles black and stuck them in. Some have fondant painted black, some of it is stuck on with uber thick piping gel.
Now for the REALLY hard part, the black light elements – I boiled tonic water with piping gel (which I’ve also never used before). This took about 4 tries to get the consistency and color I wanted. I had 2 batches, runny and super hard. So I painted the windows thick coat of runnier gel, then added the super hard gel to give it texture.
The black light element was REALLY hard to photograph, but this baby really lights up under blacklight! I hope these pictures and video do the cake justice.
This took 3 full days to pull off.
1st, It’s over 10” high, and has no structural support, meaning this 100% edible. 2nd, I’ve never really done cake sculpting before and little did I know it would be like hitting myself in the head repeatedly. 3rd, I’ve never attempted fondant detail like brick, wood and siding.
And 4th, I wanted to make it glow.
I prepared in advance and made a batch of marshmallow fondant. The next day I started with my trusty homemade chocolate cake recipe and made a 15x12 cake. When it was done baking it was 2” high. After it cooled I quartered it and stacked it using only a little bit of Swiss meringue buttercream. I knew since I was not using any supports I didn’t want a ton of buttercream between my layers and my cake sliding all over the place (even though that happened a little bit).
After I stacked it I carved it up as best as I could and crumb-iced it. Then came messing with all the fondant. I have never really tried to tint my fondant brown, and now I know why I should have made or bought chocolate fondant, because it came out a fantastic shade of ka ka. But whatever, I went with it on the lower ½ of the cake. The roof I decided to cover with white fondant and then paint it brown with gel color/vodka, which came out loads better.
The columns and porch roof are marshmallow fondant with a little gumpaste mixed in.
The chimney is all fondant, but the bird bath was a pain without using support. In the end I used a spaghetti noodle and gumpaste. Not even real spaghetti, but whole wheat spaghetti. Which is super fragile. Sigh. In the end it stayed up but it took lots and lost of tries.
The top floor, I guess the turret? Is cake moistened with Malibu rum (cuz by that point I needed a drink). I molded the cake paste, then covered it in fondant. No support is holding this baby up. Behold the power of rum, baby!
The fence was a major challenge, I couldn’t get a thing to stay without using the normal supports like toothpicks, so I reverted back to my kindergarden days and painted spaghetti noodles black and stuck them in. Some have fondant painted black, some of it is stuck on with uber thick piping gel.
Now for the REALLY hard part, the black light elements – I boiled tonic water with piping gel (which I’ve also never used before). This took about 4 tries to get the consistency and color I wanted. I had 2 batches, runny and super hard. So I painted the windows thick coat of runnier gel, then added the super hard gel to give it texture.
The black light element was REALLY hard to photograph, but this baby really lights up under blacklight! I hope these pictures and video do the cake justice.
This took 3 full days to pull off.
Baker’s site: www.fromscratchsf.com
