Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Going on a Bender Cake

Photo courtesy of our friend Jim Pankey
Very recently I helped a very good friend of ours with his wedding day. I even spent a couple of days acting as bridal planner, coordinator, and decorator. It certainly gave me a new found respect for those people, but that's another post.

This post is about this crazy groom's cake! Our friend Chris has a million interests; he's a lawyer, into martial arts, electric guitars, South Park, Simpsons, Family Guy, Futurama - he's into a little bit of everything. So when we met with him we had no idea what might come out of his head when it came down to the groom's cake. I was delighted when he said "You guys know me and what I like, just work your magic." We had already been kicking around the idea of a Bender cake, so that sealed the deal.

In my mind, this seemed like such an easy cake; he seems like such a basic shape. The execution proved to be much more difficult. Here are some notes on exactly how we straightened out Bender!

We based this cake on a 6-inch base. I looked at my domed pans and I had a six and an eight inch domes. 8 inches was going to be WAY too big. We printed out some large images to us as templates and used those to determine where the visor would be located. I made a custom cardboard cake board for that section so the visor would have something to rest upon. I also carved out the mouth area and covered the whole thing in fondant.

Our only in-progress shot of the cake!
Now for the visor, man that thing was tough! I started by making a rice crispy treat puck that fit against the side to the cake, but still came straight out. Think about how a scuba mask is made. That puck rested on the extended cake board and I used royal icing to glue it to the side of the cake.

I then took modeling chocolate and made a band that was wrapped around the puck and the board it rested on. It stuck out more than the puck, but not a lot, just enough to allow for the eyes, which we used candy melts to make. As I type this, it makes it sound easy since this is what worked, but there were several attempts that didn't.

4 comments:

  1. Sorry this cake gave you trouble but as a novice it is encouraging to know that an artist like you who does such beautiful work still runs into problems every now and then. Your finished cake is great.

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  2. Hello, I hope you still get notifications on this posting.

    I was just asked by my nephew to make a Bender head cake. The first thing I though was I get everything except the visor...how in the world will I be able to defy gravity.

    So glad to have found your blog. Any chance you could elaborate on that part of the process. Guess I am having trouble visualizing how this worked.

    Thank you...really hope to hear from you. This cake is due for September 9th

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    Replies
    1. Hi Katherine! I don't monitor this blog like I should. I know your cake is due in a few days, but really I talked quite a bit about the visor I this post. I don't really have much else to add. Using the RKT puck, the gravity defying visor is really more of an illusion. Good luck on your cake!

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