Howdy Y’all.

Thought it was about time to create an account for my other hobby--sculpting! Been sculpting off and on for the last 2(?) years and I want to start sharing what I make. 

*** Fair warning that I like to sculpt scantily clad or naked women sometimes (some with humorously proportioned features) so if that’s not your thing than don’t click the link!

Two weeks in a row! I wasn't scheduled again until December, but there was a cancellation. So I guess I was their top alternate! 

So while most bakers are ramping up their baking for the holidays, I've decided to take a little bit a of baking break. It might have something to do with the string of cakes I've done lately while working full time and doing my masters. Whew! I have to admit, I did a little baking today...just a touch. I made a quick batch of chocolate peppermint macarons - so quick that I barely waited for them to cool prior to filling them with peppermint buttercream.

While I'm on a bit of a break, I thought it might be a good time to reminisce about the early days! 

I took my first intro to cake decorating course in November 2009. In this course I learned royal icing and buttercream basics - stars, rosettes, shells, rose buds, daisies, roses, leaves, etc., and how to level, fill, mask and ice a cake in buttercream. 

The end result was a good foundation of piping basics, however I really wanted to get into decorating cakes with fondant. 

My first fondant-covered cake was done in January 2010 for my nephew's 1 month old celebration. I did some 'research' using Google and found some videos on YouTube in order to learn how to cover a cake in fondant and also how to do some basic animal figure modelling. 

My nephew was born in the year of the Ox, so my first fondant figure was a very chubby ox. 

I attempted to make modelling paste by adding tylose powder to fondant (which is still how I do it now), but at that time, I did not know about letting the fondant set for a few hours to a day prior to modelling with it, so the fondant was still quite soft. The result was a Chinese ox that became obese by the next morning. I also had not known about letting the body set before putting a large head on the body, hence the head had sunk back a bit so that he was looking up a little. I attempted to fix this by sticking a piece of fondant at the back of his neck to hold his head up properly - enter neck fat on my already obese ox. 

I was really anxious about covering my first cake in fondant as I had read about all of these terrible things that could happen, such as lumps, air bubbles, tearing, cracks, etc.

It was simpler than I thought! Beginner's luck I guess. The cake was a butter cake filled and masked in vanilla frosting. I covered the little 5-inch cake with fondant first. It was perfectly smooth - I was so happy! The perfection did not last long. I moved my cake over to roll out the fondant to cover the 8-inch cake. While rolling out the fondant, I put the end of the rolling pin into the 5-inch cake. I smoothed it the best that I could. I've said it before -  there is always a back of the cake. Lesson learned: move your covered cakes away from your workspace for safety! 

This week I made a birthday cake featuring things of significance to the birthday girl - her family, her teaching job, reading and art. My experience with figure modelling has been limited to animals primarily and my dad. Most of my figures tend to look a bit on the chubby side which I wanted to avoid for this cake, so I took to searching on the internet for pictures and tips when it comes to making fondant/gumpaste figures. 

One of the reasons that I have had some difficulty with my figures sagging and subsequently looking a bit hefty is that in the past I have not allowed enough time for pieces of the figure to set before adding other components - I have typically done the whole figure in one shot. This is not really a problem if you are doing small animals but is a good idea if you are doing larger animals or people figures. There are a few different options for what type of sugar product you use for figure modelling. Fondant alone will likely be too soft and will take too long to set. You can use gumpaste which dries super hard but is quite expensive and I find is better for smaller details, modelling paste which can also be referred to as 50/50 which is half fondant and half gumpaste, or you can making your own modelling paste by adding tylose powder to fondant (about 1/2 teaspoon to 8 oz of fondant). I tend to use the latter. 

For this family, I made all of the bodies first and allowed them to set for a day. I secured the bodies with a piece of spaghetti as I don't like to use non-edible items on my cakes if I can avoid it. I placed sponge behind the bodies to prevent them from leaning backwards as they dried. I made the heads next and allowed them to set for about 4 hours before adding the hair to avoid the weight of the hair from squishing the head. 

  The requested cake flavour was chocolate with chocolate buttercream. I seem to be on a bit of a devil's food kick - I paired it with chocolate swiss meringue buttercream and masked it with vanilla since I was covering it in light-coloured fondant. I rolled the fondant a bit too thin so it wasn't as smooth as I would have liked. I like to roll my fondant a minimum of 3/8" thick. The brand of fondant I use tends to stretch quite a bit so next time I may even roll it to 1/4" thick. 

To support the weight of the family, I covered a small, thin cake board in lime green fondant and finished it off as a rug. This way the family could simply be lifted off the cake before cutting. I seated the family on the rug around a mini fondant chocolate birthday cake. The front of the cake was finished with a blackboard with 'Happy Birthday' piped on with royal icing, fondant apples, a little book and a painter's palette.