Cake of the Week: WALL-E addition

Let's do another cake of the week! I know what you're thinking.... I haven't done one of these for a while, and I only ever did one to begin with! Well, you're right. But let's try to get things back on track. I think in the future I will try to feature a new "Cake of the Week" each monday. In general, the cakes will be pulled from the previous week's work, that is unless we get backed up or I want to feature more than one cake from a given week. Today, let's talk about a cute little sculpted cake I made for a friend of mine at the beginning of the month.
    This friend worked with me at my previous job with John and Kira's chocolates and she's been excited to order her son's birthday cake since about January (his birthday wasn't until August!). Back in January when I was young and naive, I assured her that there was no way we wouldn't be in our shop by then, and of course I would do her cake!! Little did I know I would still be working out of my home kitchen, good thing she's a very understanding friend! (Surely, we will be in our shop soon, I promise!)
    So anyway, her little boy loves WALL-E. Like, LOOOOOOVES WALL-E. Which is great because it's a great movie and even though I sobbed through the whole thing I think it's so cool for a little kid to get into it. She asked that I make a small sculpted "WALL-E" for his birthday cake. She suggested that we make him when he is folded up into his box form to simplify his construction. I started with this photo as my base for the design:

This photo served as the basis for my cake.

    We thought that this would work out well so we selected the flavors  (marble cake with chocolate icing as the filling) and I set to work on stacking and sculpting the general shape. I noticed he isn't quite a cube, so I tried to build out the bottom half a little and build up his eyes. This is how he looked before his crumb coat of icing:

    He kind of looks like he's going to be a washing machine... doesn't he? The next step was to cover this body with a layer of buttercream icing. This serves a couple of purposes. It seals all the crumbs and pieces into the cake, it creates a nice, crisp edge and a smooth surface on which to apply the fondant and it provides the delicious flavor of the buttercream before you add the fondant layer. Unfortunately, I didn't take a photo of the crumb coat, but imagine the photos above, except all white and smooth without any more visible cake crumbs.

    Next, I covered his entire body in WALL-E shaded yellow. This formed the base coat to which I started to apply flat cut out pieces in grays, black and more yellow to create the different components to this little robot. At this point, I made little gumpaste eyebrow pieces and let them set up so that I could add them to the finished piece. Once all the fondant was applied this is when you can start to tell he was going to be WALL-E.

   So, now you can see that he is started to look a little bit like WALL-E. Now the fun part begins. I LOVE painting sculpted on cakes because that's when they go from looking a bit like the subject to looking a LOT like the subject. WALL-E is dented, rusted and dirty and metallic. So, I mixed up some browns, reds, grays, blacks, yellows and whites and start building up layers of high-lights, rust and low-lights. I found that by painting on the food-coloring, then wiping a clean towel through it, I could achieve a cool, rusted look. After all his painting, he finally looked like himself.

    One of the thing I've decided to try to challenge myself with as a decorator is to try to add a little extra detail to make the cake extra special. I've usually had to work under such intense deadlines that it wasn't always possible to take a step back and add that extra element that takes a cake from being "good" to being "great." Now that I am opening my own shop, I really want to push myself to do this as a rule, to try not to settle for just "good." So, with that in mind, I realized that WALL-E needed to be with his best friend, a little cockroach names Hal. I started by finding a photo of him and then I built him out of gumpaste. I made his little body and teeny legs and antenna then allowed them to dry. Next I attached a pair of shiny wings and then I attached his legs and antenna to his body and let the whole thing set up on a toothpick. Once he was completely dry, I attached him to WALL-E so that they could be together. This is what Hal looked like on his own:

   The last thing I had to do was to address the cake drum WALL-E is sitting on. I decided to use cake crumbs to create a dirt look, since WALL-E is a trash collecting robot on a desolate Earth. Then, for the birthday message, I made a couple of leaves (just like the one WALL-E finds at the beginning of the film) and wrote "Happy Birthday" on them. I was really happy with how WALL-E came out. I can't wait to do another sculpted cake. Here he is in all his finished glory!

   So there you have  it! If you'd like to see more of our photos or if you  are interested in ordering a cake, please check out our website www.frostedfoxcakeshop.com for the how-to and photos. Also, please "like" us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/frostedfoxcakeshop  or on Instagram for more current posts about our shop, our staff and our projects! Thanks for reading!!