2D 3rd place
Phascolarctos Cinereus
by Andi Foster @anditheboosh · submitted Jul 2, 2010 · 2010 contest
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Description
I loved doing this and I may even do another! I'm in no way a professional cake maker but used to be a chef, but never much pastry and an animator, couldn't decide which to be and through a tradition of making novelty cakes for friends as fun have started doing it more and more! A friend sent me the link to the competition and it's my mom's birthday so I thought I'd give it a bash. Really loved this design when I saw it first, so colourful!
The cake is my mom's favourite flavours, of course, lemon mediera sponge filled with lemon curd, pistachio italian buttercream and tonnes of chopped roasted pistachios. I thought it would be a nice touch to make the inside of the cake reflect how colourful the outside would be so I broke out the food colouring!
Alltogether it took 5 days from bake to final decorating. The 1st days bake was tough, making sure I'd have enough to sculpt with and for the ears, turns out I didn't! So I made an additional medeira for the ears, not rainbow I'm afraid but that just took too long. I sculpted the cake in the koala head shape and wanted it to look teddy bear-ish and 3D rather than flat with just the colours laid on top. All the shapes and the cake itself is covered in coloured fondant icing. I cut all the pieces from fondant and laid them down, all the lovely clouds, hearts, rivers and other pieces that you notice when you really look at the design, which is what I love about it! I rolled thin sausages of black fondant for the outlines and then added the shading and highlights with icing pens for the pixelation/pointalism of the design. The final touch was to pipe happy birthday to my mom on the board and it was finished! The joy of baking! And a huge added bonus was that my mom said it was the nicest birthday cake she's ever seen. We carved him up and had a slice today on the happy occasion, the slices looked great, I was so pleased! and everybody liked the taste too, added bonus! Thanks for the opportunity threadcakes, such a great idea for those of us who love to bake creative!
The cake is my mom's favourite flavours, of course, lemon mediera sponge filled with lemon curd, pistachio italian buttercream and tonnes of chopped roasted pistachios. I thought it would be a nice touch to make the inside of the cake reflect how colourful the outside would be so I broke out the food colouring!
Alltogether it took 5 days from bake to final decorating. The 1st days bake was tough, making sure I'd have enough to sculpt with and for the ears, turns out I didn't! So I made an additional medeira for the ears, not rainbow I'm afraid but that just took too long. I sculpted the cake in the koala head shape and wanted it to look teddy bear-ish and 3D rather than flat with just the colours laid on top. All the shapes and the cake itself is covered in coloured fondant icing. I cut all the pieces from fondant and laid them down, all the lovely clouds, hearts, rivers and other pieces that you notice when you really look at the design, which is what I love about it! I rolled thin sausages of black fondant for the outlines and then added the shading and highlights with icing pens for the pixelation/pointalism of the design. The final touch was to pipe happy birthday to my mom on the board and it was finished! The joy of baking! And a huge added bonus was that my mom said it was the nicest birthday cake she's ever seen. We carved him up and had a slice today on the happy occasion, the slices looked great, I was so pleased! and everybody liked the taste too, added bonus! Thanks for the opportunity threadcakes, such a great idea for those of us who love to bake creative!
