3D
The Baltic Sea
by Yenna Susanty · submitted Nov 24, 2015 · 2015 contest
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Description
What to do when the husband-to-be wanted this design to be our wedding cake? I mean we were only doing a casual BBQ gathering for the wedding, but I would definitely not serve rice krispie treats to our guests! So I had to think of ways to make tentacles made of REAL cakes, big enough to feed 80 guests.
It was a challenge to wrap my head around this impossible-looking design, especially since it is my first real attempt at a gravity-defying cake! The support skeleton is made of the toughest thick wire I could find that I could still bend without big tools. I battled the metal tentacles with all my strength until I had eight tentacly shapes. The husband helped me tighten some of the wire curves and drilled eight holes onto the middle of a thick board, where we inserted the wire to prop them upright. I taped the 8 wires together halfway up to become the main dowel for the body, and nailed down one of the tentacles to support the ship. I can’t say how many times I had to count and re-count the number of tentacles, because even as wires they were interlacing, convoluted and confusing (had to tag and number them in the end)! I then insulated each wire twice with electric wire (for strength) and food-safe floral tape.
As I wanted to make it from as much cake as possible instead of rice krispie or fondant parts, I had a long thought about how I could make it work. The tentacles had to be segmented in a way that they would help the cake cling to the skeleton at any angle, as well as distribute the weight so they don’t squash each other. So, each segment is separated by a stiff plastic piece, with a hole punched in the middle. Each plastic piece is secured in place with a straw.
I gave the theory a test by assembling a tiny piece of cake on a horizontal tentacle. It was not easy; the wire is thick and the cake around the wire is not very thick, so there were not much cakey strength to go on. With the support of a layer of chocolate ganache on the outside and then wrapped in a thin layer of fondant, the test held on for 18 hours in room temperature. So for the real deal, I made a fudgier version of my peanut butter chocolate cake for the kraken’s head and the ship, and the tentacles were chocolate cakes, with a fudgier version of my salted caramel filling.
After carving the head around the main “dowel”, the tentacle part of the cakes were much more challenging. The sequence went:
1. slide plastic disc from tip of tentacle all the way in
2. slide in a 2” length straw
3. slather ganache around the straw and the disc
4. cut the cake with a small round cookie cutter and punch hole in the middle of the cake with a straw
5. slide the cake in (hold breath or the cake might fall apart - it was a bit like the electric wire game)
6. cut the caramel fudge with the same cookie cutter and straw, and slide it in
7. slide in another layer of cake
8. slide in another plastic disc
9. cover the cake between the two discs with ganache
10. wrap with cling wrap to make sure the cake held on before the fondant wrap steps in later
11. repeat for 2 days and 2 nights (set alarm to eat and drink occasionally)
It took way longer than I expected, and my pantry was a shipwreck, but I’m glad to say I was able to make all but 1 of the tentacles from cake all the way (except 2-3 inches of just fondants on the tips, and 2x2 inch segments at difficult corners made of rice krispies). The tentacle attacking the ship was the only one made of rice krispies as the tip of that tentacle was buried inside the ship.
It took another day to cover the cake with fondant and make the suckers, and another day to paint the cake blue, dry it, and smudge the paint with water to create octopus-like texture, and glaze everything with mirror jelly. This cake made me climb a chair, squat and do minor wrist contortions to access some of the angles. I was completely reliant on my husband to move it in and out of the fridge as it was so heavy (at least 15 kg!), and the tentacles wobbled with every step. He made quite a few trips with it; to be safe I returned it to rest in the fridge every 2 hours (Singapore is warm and humid, even with AC on full blast). It was the size of a small child, and it dominated the entire fridge, floor to ceiling with all shelves removed, including those on the door.
So all in all the inedibles are 8 thick metal wires, stiff plastic discs and straws, wooden dowels for the masts and weaved wires for the ropes on the ship. The sails are marshmallow fondants (pressed with fabric to get the textures), and everything else was chocolate cake, caramel fudge, peanut butter cake, chocolate fudge, some rice krisipie, fondant, edible food coloring and jelly glaze.
I warned the guests that they were getting a disaster of a cake (get it?). Luckily I wasn’t wearing white, otherwise I would be very very blue by the end! The cake cutting ceremony was a very sticky and messy and a little gruesome, but it was strangely gratifying to perform the kraken dissection. Our guests were baffled (we justified the choice of design for a wedding by calling it the “It’s too Late to Abandon Ship” cake), but everybody loved eating the cake, blue goo and all!
My first Threadcakes entry last year inaugurated my Facebook baking page www.facebook.com/onlyYdesignercakes, and this second entry just marked another life event.
It was a challenge to wrap my head around this impossible-looking design, especially since it is my first real attempt at a gravity-defying cake! The support skeleton is made of the toughest thick wire I could find that I could still bend without big tools. I battled the metal tentacles with all my strength until I had eight tentacly shapes. The husband helped me tighten some of the wire curves and drilled eight holes onto the middle of a thick board, where we inserted the wire to prop them upright. I taped the 8 wires together halfway up to become the main dowel for the body, and nailed down one of the tentacles to support the ship. I can’t say how many times I had to count and re-count the number of tentacles, because even as wires they were interlacing, convoluted and confusing (had to tag and number them in the end)! I then insulated each wire twice with electric wire (for strength) and food-safe floral tape.
As I wanted to make it from as much cake as possible instead of rice krispie or fondant parts, I had a long thought about how I could make it work. The tentacles had to be segmented in a way that they would help the cake cling to the skeleton at any angle, as well as distribute the weight so they don’t squash each other. So, each segment is separated by a stiff plastic piece, with a hole punched in the middle. Each plastic piece is secured in place with a straw.
I gave the theory a test by assembling a tiny piece of cake on a horizontal tentacle. It was not easy; the wire is thick and the cake around the wire is not very thick, so there were not much cakey strength to go on. With the support of a layer of chocolate ganache on the outside and then wrapped in a thin layer of fondant, the test held on for 18 hours in room temperature. So for the real deal, I made a fudgier version of my peanut butter chocolate cake for the kraken’s head and the ship, and the tentacles were chocolate cakes, with a fudgier version of my salted caramel filling.
After carving the head around the main “dowel”, the tentacle part of the cakes were much more challenging. The sequence went:
1. slide plastic disc from tip of tentacle all the way in
2. slide in a 2” length straw
3. slather ganache around the straw and the disc
4. cut the cake with a small round cookie cutter and punch hole in the middle of the cake with a straw
5. slide the cake in (hold breath or the cake might fall apart - it was a bit like the electric wire game)
6. cut the caramel fudge with the same cookie cutter and straw, and slide it in
7. slide in another layer of cake
8. slide in another plastic disc
9. cover the cake between the two discs with ganache
10. wrap with cling wrap to make sure the cake held on before the fondant wrap steps in later
11. repeat for 2 days and 2 nights (set alarm to eat and drink occasionally)
It took way longer than I expected, and my pantry was a shipwreck, but I’m glad to say I was able to make all but 1 of the tentacles from cake all the way (except 2-3 inches of just fondants on the tips, and 2x2 inch segments at difficult corners made of rice krispies). The tentacle attacking the ship was the only one made of rice krispies as the tip of that tentacle was buried inside the ship.
It took another day to cover the cake with fondant and make the suckers, and another day to paint the cake blue, dry it, and smudge the paint with water to create octopus-like texture, and glaze everything with mirror jelly. This cake made me climb a chair, squat and do minor wrist contortions to access some of the angles. I was completely reliant on my husband to move it in and out of the fridge as it was so heavy (at least 15 kg!), and the tentacles wobbled with every step. He made quite a few trips with it; to be safe I returned it to rest in the fridge every 2 hours (Singapore is warm and humid, even with AC on full blast). It was the size of a small child, and it dominated the entire fridge, floor to ceiling with all shelves removed, including those on the door.
So all in all the inedibles are 8 thick metal wires, stiff plastic discs and straws, wooden dowels for the masts and weaved wires for the ropes on the ship. The sails are marshmallow fondants (pressed with fabric to get the textures), and everything else was chocolate cake, caramel fudge, peanut butter cake, chocolate fudge, some rice krisipie, fondant, edible food coloring and jelly glaze.
I warned the guests that they were getting a disaster of a cake (get it?). Luckily I wasn’t wearing white, otherwise I would be very very blue by the end! The cake cutting ceremony was a very sticky and messy and a little gruesome, but it was strangely gratifying to perform the kraken dissection. Our guests were baffled (we justified the choice of design for a wedding by calling it the “It’s too Late to Abandon Ship” cake), but everybody loved eating the cake, blue goo and all!
My first Threadcakes entry last year inaugurated my Facebook baking page www.facebook.com/onlyYdesignercakes, and this second entry just marked another life event.
