Pollock

I'm obsessed with every cake decorating/challenge show on TV, so when I found out about the Threadcakes contest through Twitter, I thought this would be the the perfect opportunity to debut my cake design skills. I'm a big fan of Threadless.com and thought making a cake inspired by my favorite design would be a blast. So I enlisted my creative sister to help me out and and then picked a design. I quickly found out, however, that cake decorating was waaay harder than it seems on TV. I am in no way a professional, but my sister and I had a ton of fun making this cake. I chose "Pollock" because he's not only one of my favorite artists, but the design itself is so vibrant and fun. We had A LOT of trouble figuring out how to mold him out of gum paste (I hope I can conquer my fear of gum paste before my next try - maybe Threadcakes next year?), so we found ourselves with several versions of him. The figure, in the end, was not how I saw it in mind, but we definitely did the best we could, with what we had. Covering the cake in fondant was also another challenge I didn't realize would be so frustrating. I have never used fondant, but I've watched a lot of YouTube "How To..." videos on working with fondant. Nonetheless, we did encounter some puckering, but it turned out great. I used icing coloring to paint the Pollock-esque portion of the cake - that was so much fun. Buuut, I couldn't find any colors that actually matched the artist's design so these colors are definitely my interpretation. There are still a few splatter marks on my walls from this part of the process :) I think it turned out pretty well for my first try at cake decorating...and it tastes amazing too. I had such an awesome time with this and I hope you enjoy my entry!