3D
Playful Hands
by Melissa Kelly-Hill · submitted Aug 17, 2010 · 2010 contest
1 / 51
Description
When I was a little girl I was always fascinated by little tiny things, like stories of Thumbelina, and tiny fairies flitting about, or the little worms on Sesame St that lived in a milk carton. I thought it would be so neat to be so tiny!-a matchstick box suddenly becomes a cozy bed, or a dew drop quenches your thirst for the day! It would be so magical to go back and forth between tiny and giant size like Alice, in Alice in Wonderland. Okay, well, maybe I'm still a bit fascinated... Perhaps that is why when I saw this shirt design I knew I wanted to transform my childhood fascination into some whimsical delicious cakey goodness!
This was my first sculpted cake ever! (It is also my first fondant covered cake! I was quite intimidated.) I was a little challenged with the 3D effects when it came time to add the tree stump (it was a tight squeeze). I also underestimated the sculpting of the hands and I was lucky that the cake did not fall apart between all of my experiments. Eventually I used pieces and parts of rolled up fondant, shaped them into a crude hand shape, brushed the pieces in water, then covered the whole bit with a thin piece of flesh colored fondant (which looked very much like real flesh-it was kinda creepy). Once I pressed down some edges and added the edible marker lines, a passable representation of hands was created. I was proud. tee hee.
It took at least, and maybe more than, an hour to get the color blue I wanted for the fondant! Whew! It was worth it though! (just thought I'd add that random thought)
Because the design was whimsical, yet bland in color scale, I thought the inside of the cake should be bright and cheery. Cake layer one was chocolate (like soil), cake layer two was classic yellow (from a mix) tinted green (like grass), and cake layers three and four were delicious almond white cake, tinted white and blue (like the sky). Because this shirt design is quite girly, I decided to add bright pink butter cream icing to contrast with the blue fondant and colorful layers. I think it worked out pretty well. Cutting the cake was definitely a fun experience!
I can't think of anything else that really challenged me besides the fondant, the 3D hands and the real life sizing of it all. I will say that pretzel sticks made awesome edible supports for my little chocolate critters and landscape accessories (incidentally this entire structure is 100% edible). This cake took approximately 16-18 hours to complete in one day, after completing another 12 hour cake the day previously, and before my 1.5 hour nap that preceded my 10 hour shift at my regular people job. Hope that rambly timeline made sense to someone, I have still yet to sleep and am in need of rest from all this cakey goodness!
Hope someone loves my cake as much as I do! Thanks Threadless! This was fun!
This was my first sculpted cake ever! (It is also my first fondant covered cake! I was quite intimidated.) I was a little challenged with the 3D effects when it came time to add the tree stump (it was a tight squeeze). I also underestimated the sculpting of the hands and I was lucky that the cake did not fall apart between all of my experiments. Eventually I used pieces and parts of rolled up fondant, shaped them into a crude hand shape, brushed the pieces in water, then covered the whole bit with a thin piece of flesh colored fondant (which looked very much like real flesh-it was kinda creepy). Once I pressed down some edges and added the edible marker lines, a passable representation of hands was created. I was proud. tee hee.
It took at least, and maybe more than, an hour to get the color blue I wanted for the fondant! Whew! It was worth it though! (just thought I'd add that random thought)
Because the design was whimsical, yet bland in color scale, I thought the inside of the cake should be bright and cheery. Cake layer one was chocolate (like soil), cake layer two was classic yellow (from a mix) tinted green (like grass), and cake layers three and four were delicious almond white cake, tinted white and blue (like the sky). Because this shirt design is quite girly, I decided to add bright pink butter cream icing to contrast with the blue fondant and colorful layers. I think it worked out pretty well. Cutting the cake was definitely a fun experience!
I can't think of anything else that really challenged me besides the fondant, the 3D hands and the real life sizing of it all. I will say that pretzel sticks made awesome edible supports for my little chocolate critters and landscape accessories (incidentally this entire structure is 100% edible). This cake took approximately 16-18 hours to complete in one day, after completing another 12 hour cake the day previously, and before my 1.5 hour nap that preceded my 10 hour shift at my regular people job. Hope that rambly timeline made sense to someone, I have still yet to sleep and am in need of rest from all this cakey goodness!
Hope someone loves my cake as much as I do! Thanks Threadless! This was fun!
