spoonfuls of goodness: March 2014

Hello! It has been a few months since my last blog post. However, I am back and hopefully able to keep up some regular posts going. I thought I would start the first post of 2014 to be of my most recent cake creation venture.

This cake was for a 21st birthday of someone special. They love photography, and as a vow, I said that one day I would make them a camera cake. The day finally came. It was my first 3D sculptured cake, in terms that it required carving, layering and different aspects for it to look like the real thing. As I wanted to get as much detail as I could, I had photos of the camera to use as a reference point.

This cake was the first time I had ever written on fondant using edible paint. This was scary as I was using white paint on black fondant. If I produced any major mistakes, I was doomed!

A few last things, the weather was humid which meant that anything could have happened for the cake to be ruined. Furthermore, this cake was going for a drive down towards Jervis Bay (2.5 hours away). This was my second biggest fear. I was afraid the cake wouldn't make the journey. To make sure the cake didn't collapse, I placed some fondant rolled in plastic in between the top of the lens and the front of the camera. I was very glad that it made the journey with no damages *sighs in relief*.

Overall, the cake has to be the best fondant cake I have made to date (despite staying up until 2am finishing off final details). I was surprised that I didn't fall asleep while writing on the cake. I was very happy with how it turned out, especially since it consisted of a lot of firsts. I was too scared to cut into the cake, so the birthday boy did all the cake cutting.

Things you'll need:

Thunder Cake Recipe times 3 (1 batch for square, and 2 for rectangle)
1 Large rectangular spring form pan (Like this)
1 Square cake pan (21cm x 21cm)
Camera template : I enlarged the image in a word doc of A4 paper to the size I wanted. For a Canon camera, I extended the front grip of the body.
Toothpicks
Serrated knife
Circle cookie cutters
Offset spatula
Chocolate ganache recipe (I used 300g dark chocolate, 300g milk chocolate and 600ml of thickened cream)
Black fondant: 1.5kg to be safe Available here
Red fondant: You don't need much, so you may be better off colouring white fondant red using red gel paste. Available here
Silver edible paint Available here
White edible pain Available here
Other colour fondant to cover cake board (Optional)
Rolling pin
Corn flour (can also be substituted with tapioca or rice flour)
Thin paint brushes
Fondant tools: If you don't have fondant tools a small sharp knife will suffice
Various icing piping tips: This was used to get nice clean cut circles of various sizes using different ends of the tips
12" Cake Board + 12" cake box Available here
Water to stick fondant together
Unfortunately, I have no photos of the cake cross-section as the camera body was cut the following day and I didn't get a photo of it.

Rectangle Pan: I used toothpicks to pin the template to the cake. Using the serrated knife I cut out 2 of the templates.

I used cake offcuts to the create the top part of the camera. I stacked them on top of each other to make sure I got the height and shape to my liking

Photo reference point

I used ganache to stick the cake offcuts to the body. I wasn't happy with the grip component of the cake from the template. Therefore, I added an extra bit of cake so that it was longer and more square than round at the front. I did a ganache crumb coat of the 2 halves separately.

I then realised I forgot the part that sits above the lens which contains the camera brand. Therefore, I roughly cut something to the shape I wanted and attached it using ganache. Refrigerated for 1 hour.

I carved the camera body so all the edges were smooth and even. I carved down where the shutter button is located. I added another light crumb coat to the newly carved area. Refrigerated for 30 minutes.

Final camera body done!

I stacked the cakes together and did a final ganache coat. This was then refrigerated until fondant work.

Square pan: I was able to get 4 circles (2 large, and 2 slightly smaller). Using the cookie cutters, I chose the large size I wanted for the front of the lens. I went one size smaller for the body of the lens to give it some shape.

Lens completed!

1 crumb coat (refrigerated for 1 hour) then a final coat (refrigerated until fondant work). For the lens to fit on the cake board, roughly 3cm had to be cut from the end.

For the fondant work, I called my sister for assistance. There were no cuts or gaps in the fondant! The fondant was kneaded together and rolled out (using corn flour so it didn't stick to the table or rolling pin) then placed on top of the cake.

After the fondant work was done, I carefully transported the camera body to the cake board. The lens was attached to the body with some chocolate ganache. Decorations begin!

Using varying piping tips I cut out different sized circles for the camera buttons.

For the lens, I cut strips of black fondant and used the knife to put little indents for detail. I brushed a bit of water on each fixture for it stick to the fondant. Other details were different sized rectangles that I adjusted to suit the scale of the camera.

Buttons and fixtures on the back of the camera. I rolled out a thin sausage of black fondant for the area around the view finder.

Using the white edible paint and a thin paint brush I hand wrote all the camera body and lens details.

I used one of my fondant tools to indent an area of the lens which has the aperture readings.

As you can see, there are a few dodgy writing on the cake there.

I cut rectangles for the various screens and view finder on the cake. I made the flash connector (which is a bit hard to see). To do so, I cut out some mini circles and rolled bits of fondant. I painted them all using edible silver paint. Lastly, I rolled out a thin sausage of red fondant and placed it on the rim of the lens.