For the Twi-hards

Oh, yes, a Twilight cake 🙂 I haven’t read any of the books or seen the movies, but I am fully aware of the fanfare surrounding the phenomenon.

My friend, Tracy, of Monkey Tales Theatre, asked me to make a cake for her New Moon party. They were having a fun-filled celebration to welcome the opening of the new movie of the Twilight series.

I did my research, looking at pictures of the book and the movie. It didn’t need to be  big cake so I opted for a simple 9″ round. As of yet, I haven’t had the ability to have colored fondant on hand, so I still have to color my own. So, courtesy of Wilton Pure White Fondant and super awesome Wilton Color Gel in black and of course my two wonderful kneading hands…. I was able to make lovely black fondant… easy peasy. I also made red fondant for the “scarf” thing around the base of the cake. For the lettering, I cut out a piece of white fondant and took stamps (normal stamps you would put on an ink pad- never used of course) and painted watered down Wilton Color Gel on them and stamped the white fondant, then I went back and carefully painted in the letters to make the color more even and uniform the edges.

Now the toughest part was the flower. Oy Vey! The flower is a Ruffled Tulip and is absolutely gorgeous… but I was fearful that I would not be able to do it justice. I was going to use fondant but decided I needed a harder material.

Gumpaste!! Dries super hard and is fragile, but totally worth it.

I rolled out the gumpaste and laid a template over it and carefully but quickly cut around it in the outline shape of the ruffled tulip and stem on the cover of the book. After it dried ( a few hours, depending on thickness) I sat down with the Wilton gel colors and a paint brush ( I think I had 3 or 4 actually) and painted what I saw on the cover of the book. It was tedious. But I kinda felt like I was in high school art class the whole time 🙂 – thank you Mr. Ressel.

I think the caked turned out great. It was the first time I didn’t focus on the little imperfections of one of my creations. It was fun to make and it brought a flood of memories back from art class – gasp- 12 years ago. Mr. Ressel was a fantastic teacher and an even better artist.

Tracy and her party goers liked the cake too…. making sculpture cakes is one of those mediums in which you enjoy comments such as, “It looks fake!” and “Can we eat it?”

Weird 🙂

Have a great week cakers!

Shannon