Microwaves Are Just Too Slow

Well, I must confess I actually baked this cake last year (but didn't submit it last year!). I had been watching threadcakes and was itching to try my hand at it, but I didn't have access to baking stuff until threadcakes' submission period was over.

However, I saw that as long as the cake hadn't been submitted before, and was of a threadless design, it was acceptable, so I went for it!

I chose this design because of its relative simplicity as well as its subject matter. This was the first time I worked with gumpaste, and I wanted to try out something small first.

I spent a few hours over many days preparing the gumpaste figurine. I learned that this probably wasn't the best method, as the gumpaste parts would dry out and then it was a little difficult to assemble together, but everything worked out in the end. I used a few toothpicks inside to stabilize the limbs and the figure on top of the icing.

The final day I baked two round vanilla sheet cakes. I flattened one and layered them together with icing in the middle.

I made a raspberry icing, and the raspberries along with more food dye gave it the color. I was hoping to get it more red, but as anyone who's worked with icing knows, a strong red is an incredibly difficult color to achieve. I didn't want to spend all my new, expensive food coloring on one cake, so I let it be. I also tried to minimize the amount of icing, as no one in my family is a huge icing fan.

Last I arranged the microwave, figure, and broken glass on the cake. Well, actually, last I cut into and finally got to eat it!

I think my favorite part was how his little spitcurl turned out - too cute!