We made this cake a couple of weekends ago and this was the first cake where I applied the techniques I learned in Mike McCarey's cake structure class.
This was a fairly large cake, coming in at almost 2 feet tall, so it was going to need some support. Once the structure was completed (you'll get to see it at the end!) I started stacking cakes up around the center support. Once the cakes were all stacked, the stein got a nice coat of butter cream and I then wrapped the whole thing in a thin later of modeling chocolate. The top (gold) pieces of the stein were made from modeling chocolate as was the handle. I made all the handle pieces in half and then connected them around the copper structure underneath. The great thing about modeling chocolate is that it really will fuse back together and with just a little work will look very seamless.
The graphics around the stein was taken from an image sent to us by the groom. We
thought just printing it out on edible image paper an wrapping it around the cake would be SO easy. It wasn't THAT easy. For starters, the make the image large enough, we had to print it across 6 pieces of paper and then piece it together. That went pretty good, but things in the back didn't come together so great at first. The graphics just didn't match up well at all. We printed another sheet physically big enough to fill in the gap and then I channeled my best Bob Ross and painted in a cave and some trees to bring the scene together. It looked good, especially for the "back" of the cake.
OK, so here's a picture of the structure we used on this cake. It's just a center wooden dowel rod with a length of copper tubing to act as a support for the handle. We just drilled a hole through the dowel and fed the copper tubing through it. Easy peasy, right?
I can say that when we started this cake we took a photo of the stein and blew it up to our dimensions. And yes, I looked a little crazy at our local Home Depot with my HUGE stein picture. But an employee named Neil (who is a big Cake Boss fan) spotted me and we had a great time figuring out some options for the structure. We could just lay the picture down on a counter and lay everything out. It worked out very nicely.
And if this post weren't long enough already I got the sweetest e-mail from the bride on Christmas day. It read:
"Both of the cakes you made were AMAZING!!! We got sooooo many
compliments on both and are even sending in photos of the groom's cake
to World of Warcraft to put in their gallery. We had done so much
searching to find a cake like what Clay wanted, but could never really
find one that met up to what we wanted. Well you totally blew that out
of the water and then some LOL. Some of the guests thought it was a
sculpture at first and were in shock to find out it was a cake :D You
truly did an over the top job. And then on top of the cakes being so
beautiful and intricate, they tasted even better. We took some of the
wedding cake with us on the honeymoon and even the Disney people were
impressed by how amazing it looked and tasted. You made our dreams come
to life in the most wonderful way. We can not thank you enough."
I couldn't have asked for a better gift on Christmas day! Be sure to stop back in on Friday for more adventures!!
UPDATE: As well as being featured on WOW Insider, This cake has been entered into InkEdibles February 2012 monthly edible image contest. Since you're already here I would certainly appreciate your vote. Simply click here and the click the "Like" button next to my cake. It uses Facebook so there's no signup or registration - Easy Peasy!
