Who wants to see my pretty pretty princess cake?

[sabotabby]

Miss Lynx is having a princess party because we're grownups and we can do things like that now, so I baked a ridonkulous cake. I want to post it to FB but I don't want her to see it yet, and while she has a DW, she never checks it, so I think I am safe posting it here.

It is not as structurally sound as I want it to be, on account of I thought I would use good jam that was tasty, rather than cheap-ass jam, but it turns out the cheap jam does a much better job of holding cake together. Oh well. Fondant covers a multitude of sins. I'd like to get a bit faster with sculpting so that I can get a better face without worrying that it will dry out, but not bad for a first attempt at a person-cake?













Here it is before I painted it. Like a Greek statue, it looked far less tacky, but I was going for tacky:




 

Comments

[wlach]

Yeah I'd say that's pretty impressive for a first attempt. What's fondant like to work with? Sounds like something that would demand quite a bit of patience.

[sabotabby]

Ehhh, not really. I use it because it doesn't require much patience. Though it depends on the type. The kind I get from the baking store down the street is really good to work with; it rolls out quite thin and is pretty pliable.

Difficulties are:

1) Timing. I'm capable of much better anatomy and detail than this, but it dries out in 10 minutes. You can fix it a bit with water, but there were potential structural integrity issues with the cake as well (which turned out fine; the jam set by the time the cake was ready to go, and it was worth the initial annoyance because it did taste much better than the cheap jam I normally use) so I didn't want to mess with it too much. But you have to be careful with sealing it too.

2) Weight. The arms were originally proportional, but they sagged and I didn't think of toothpicks until later.

3) Taste. It's straight-up sugar. I haven't discovered a way to cut it. Nailed It! uses rice crispy squares, which I could theoretically make myself using Dandies, but that's a pain in the ass and also I don't even like rice crispy squares. I'm working on rolling it thinner because a small amount is fine, but a large amount gives me heart palpitations. There's no avoiding it with sculptural elements, though.

In general, it is a miracle substance and a gift to people like me who are bad at icing.