3D Finalist 2
Tiger Lily
by Nathasja Flapper · submitted Sep 22, 2014 · 2014 contest
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Description
I am a new hobby/amateur cake decorator. First cake I decorated was early 2013, made about one per one or two months, and from begin 2014 gradually more to around 8-12 cakes per month.
Last year I followed Threadcakes, pledged I would join one day, that day seems to be a few years earlier then I thought ;)
So here is my first entry to Threadcakes, my version of Tiger Lily.
When I saw her, I fell in love with the whole picture, and since I wanted to give myself a challenge, this should be it.
She is 14" tall, build up out of vanilla poundcake (eggs, sugar, self raising flour, butter, vanilla emulsion and some salt), sprenkled with real amaretto, filled and covered in ganache (cream and chocolate), pretty simple but oh so delishious! Decorations are made of fondant, since that is the medium I am most comfortable with. As the photos show, she is mostly cake and about 98% edible.
Non-edibles:
I only used food safe materials, stainless steel, bamboo and plastic foil.
The support I used is a stainless steel (foodsafe) threaded rod screwed on the cake board with again foodsafe stainless steel nuts, and above the neck, I used a plastic foil covered carton to support the head, and another one above that just to be sure, since it was a heavy cake. I have pictures of how I did that. The arrow itself is a thin bamboo dowel. Note its all foodsafe stainless steel I used.
The cake board is a standard one, covered in velour, which is temporarily protected by plastic foil. I had to hot-glue styrofoam under it because of the rod/nut that was sticking out under it, this does not touch the cake.
It took me 3 days to make, from baking to eating.
Since Tiger Lily looks like a watercolor painting, I wanted to paint the whole cake with watercolor, so I used alcohol and liquid foodpaint to hand paint the entire cake to get the same effect and to help with the final shots to look like a painting.
The feathers were originally glued on with water, but then a very humid day came along and I had to re-glue them with royal icing. Most other decor is glued with water or royal icing, depending on how fast it needed to glue/dry.
Many of the techniques I used are new to me, the inner support like this, the handpainting watercolor thing, the hair, the ears and the size is new too, I made faces and figurines out of fondant before, but to make it this big is totally different.
The final photo was taken against white background, which I had to edit out to get rid of any weirdness. All shadows left are painted on. Then the only thing changed is the contrast/brightness and the white levels to give it a more flat painted look.
Last year I followed Threadcakes, pledged I would join one day, that day seems to be a few years earlier then I thought ;)
So here is my first entry to Threadcakes, my version of Tiger Lily.
When I saw her, I fell in love with the whole picture, and since I wanted to give myself a challenge, this should be it.
She is 14" tall, build up out of vanilla poundcake (eggs, sugar, self raising flour, butter, vanilla emulsion and some salt), sprenkled with real amaretto, filled and covered in ganache (cream and chocolate), pretty simple but oh so delishious! Decorations are made of fondant, since that is the medium I am most comfortable with. As the photos show, she is mostly cake and about 98% edible.
Non-edibles:
I only used food safe materials, stainless steel, bamboo and plastic foil.
The support I used is a stainless steel (foodsafe) threaded rod screwed on the cake board with again foodsafe stainless steel nuts, and above the neck, I used a plastic foil covered carton to support the head, and another one above that just to be sure, since it was a heavy cake. I have pictures of how I did that. The arrow itself is a thin bamboo dowel. Note its all foodsafe stainless steel I used.
The cake board is a standard one, covered in velour, which is temporarily protected by plastic foil. I had to hot-glue styrofoam under it because of the rod/nut that was sticking out under it, this does not touch the cake.
It took me 3 days to make, from baking to eating.
Since Tiger Lily looks like a watercolor painting, I wanted to paint the whole cake with watercolor, so I used alcohol and liquid foodpaint to hand paint the entire cake to get the same effect and to help with the final shots to look like a painting.
The feathers were originally glued on with water, but then a very humid day came along and I had to re-glue them with royal icing. Most other decor is glued with water or royal icing, depending on how fast it needed to glue/dry.
Many of the techniques I used are new to me, the inner support like this, the handpainting watercolor thing, the hair, the ears and the size is new too, I made faces and figurines out of fondant before, but to make it this big is totally different.
The final photo was taken against white background, which I had to edit out to get rid of any weirdness. All shadows left are painted on. Then the only thing changed is the contrast/brightness and the white levels to give it a more flat painted look.
