A Friend's Job

This is my second Threadcakes entry, and this time I thought I would try a 3D cake. I've never tried sculpting a cake before so I thought “A Friend's Job” would be perfect because I'd be able to use a bear cake pan (also, it's just so super-cute).

Once again I was working around my daughter's schedule, so it took me about 3 days, but probably only 18 or so hours in all. The first day I baked the bears and base cake – I wanted to test out two recipes so I split the batter and made the lion from vanilla pound cake and the bear from lemon-raspberry pound cake. When I took the bear out I realized that not only had some of the batter leaked out leaving me only ¾ of a bear, but that the berries were making the silhouette a little wonky. I was worried I'd have to re-make the cake, but in the end I made it work. I made new feet and an arm out of gum paste (as well the lion's arms, tail and needle) and attached them with toothpicks. I used vanilla buttercream to ice the base cake in the sand colour of the T-shirt and iced the bear in lemon buttercream and put them in the fridge while I worked on the lion.

The lion took most of my time. I sculpted his body a bit to make him look more like the T-shirt, then iced him in chocolate buttercream and set to work covering him in homemade marshmallow fondant patches. I rolled out each patch individually and painted them with gel colour mixed with vodka (each patch is inspired by the design on the T-shirt's corresponding patch). I then attached each patch with piping gel – it was a bit of a tightrope walk between having the colour dry enough to handle, but not letting the fondant become too stiff and dry, and I swear I ended up with as much colour on my hands as on the patches. Once all the patches were done I piped in the stitches with melted chocolate then set to work cutting out and attaching the fondant for the mane and tail. The last thing I did was attach the needle to the lion's paw and run the thread (made from quartered Shoelace candy dipped in chocolate) to the bear. Oh, and did I mention that the lion and bear were only 4 inches tall?

It didn't turn out quite as well as I would have liked, but all in all I think it's not too bad for my first 3D cake. It was so hard to cut into the super adorable bear, but, after all, cake is made to be eaten. I let my husband take the rest to work, though, because I just couldn't watch my hard work be chopped to pieces (that, and I don't need to eat any more cake). I'm proud to report that both recipes were tasty, but the lemon-raspberry was definitely my favourite.