Hail to the Victors!!! Happy Birthday Joe!

Here it is! The final cake alongside a real Michigan football helmet.





And this is my favorite angle- The "Money" shot :)



SO, the face mask.... Three days was def. not long enough for it to set up. Every single one of the ropes of fondant cracked or broke while I was trying to assemble. Thankfully I made really long ropes so I had something to work with. I almost resorted to gluing the pieces back together and gluing the cross bars for stabilization. I ended up tossing one of the ropes all together and using 6 toothpicks to make it work.

I assembled it, said a prayer and a wish and sent it down to Ann Arbor for Joe's 30th birthday party. Apparently it traveled well and arrived in one piece! Yay! And some of the diners at the restaurant asked for my business card! Are you kidding? I was so pleased when I heard that... now to make some business cards....

....and now back to the show!

OK, made the marshmallow fondant and then as I was hunting down some black icing I found MORE white modeling fondant I had tucked away. argh! But, at least it was all set up and I could use it asap.

Anyhow, the cake is for #1's Godfather's 30th birthday. He played football in college and his number was 73. So as an homage I added his number to the back of the helmet:



Here is what the front looks like:



and now for the white stuff. I wanted to add a white border around the black face area so it would look like the padding on the inside of the helmet. Plus, it tidied up the lines between the black and the blue.



The other part I needed white fondant for is for the nameplate on the front of the helmet. I needed the black icing for this- to write out the word "Michigan"
I don't think I have a close up of this on purpose because it didn't look very good. Again, I should have done this with edible paint- but I just used icing and then various tools to make the lines 'cleaner'. This and the face mask (to come shortly) took FOREVER.



And here is the completed helmet. I feel sneaky showing you the final cake with the addition of the face mask without the steps in between. The face mask was hands down the hardest part of the cake.



I'll elaborate more on the next post....

More helmet-ing

I started bright and early today.. I didn't have to work at the bakery as my mentor is running a race so she wouldn't be there for me to shadow. I got to 'sleep in' on a Saturday! When did sleeping in mean 7 am?

Breakfast with the kiddies, coffee for me and I set to work. I also brought out a real helmet for some inspiration (You can spot it in the background of some pictures)

I warmed up the fondant so it was pliable and then laid it on top of the cake that had been refrigerated overnight. It was a little bit harder to shape than just a regular cake and also I was afraid I hadn't made enough so it was a little tricky.



Then I added some black dye to the navy fondant so I could cover the face area in black.



Then I set to work on the yellow fondant and began making the signature "wings" of a Michigan helmet:





Then I realized I needed some plain white fondant for the next steps and what do you know, I colored the last bit I had in yellow. Sweet. Pause while I make some more fondant.... This is the commercial break of the show, queue music...

Let the games begin....

Started work on the helmet cake tonight... So far, fairly simple. I looked up some 'how to's' on the internet this week and got the basic idea. I began working on the face mask on Wednesday night and I haven't touched since. I'm trying to let it dry out so it will be hard enough to attach tomorrow before delivery. As I learned with the Wubbzy cake, these stand alone pieces really need time to dry out. They suggested a full week on the 'how to', so hopefully 3 days is enough. Crossing my fingers.

Here is how I started:



This is a 4 layer cake- the first 3 layers are chocolate banana cake with banana flavored ganache (6 inch round) and the top layer is half of a ball cake, just plain butter/yellow cake.
I started to carve out the front...



Then I dirty frosted w/ the swiss buttercream I am so fond of :) (thank you Zingerman's!)



And then spent a ridiculous amount of time getting the fondant navy blue. Seriously, it took forever. That is my least favorite part- dying the fondant and kneading. This is what it looks like rolled out...



I think that's about it for tonight, more in the a.m. :)