Who Do You Want to be Today

It took me so long to pick a Threadless design to turn into cake this year. But once I saw this one, I knew I had to try it. I just loved all the textures and little details.

I made the design out of fondant, cutting out each piece by eye with an exacto. A few pieces like the rose and the umbrella I made 3D.

I added texture to the cableknit sweater with a skewer. The blue pin stripes on #10's suit, I added by sitting a piece of blue fondant on top of the brown, then slicing through with a knife, and letting the knife drag the colour into the suit.

I melted sugar in the oven and cut it to size for the glass pieces (two pairs of glasses, the magnifying glass and the cookie jar), and half-melted some sugar and brushed it with diluted blue dye for the crystal.

My two favourite pieces are the tiny little Time Lord underpants (which I made by scoring the pattern into the fondant with a toothpick, then dripping a food dye-vodka mixture into the crevices), and the lei (made by pulling bits of fondant off with the back end of a skewer, then sticking them together).

This has been the hardest cake I've ever made, but I think it's also my best cake ever. It took me about 30 hours to create. I thought the fondant would be the riskiest part, but when I baked my cake, it exploded coming out of the pan. Fortunately, I had the time and ingredients to bake a new one, which held together perfectly.

The cake is chocolate with cream cheese frosting.