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Saturday, March 13, 2010

JACK IN THE GARDEN

I made this for a little girl named Beth who turned 2 today... Enjoy!
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Here is Jack, the tuxedo kitty Beth loves to chase though the house. He is made entirely of fondant, with a toothpick to help hold his head steady. LOL
His eyes are yellow fondant, but then I painted on his cat's eyes. *meow*


Roses for the garden -- the dark ones are actually a lavender color, but I am having issues with my camera and the color lavender right now.

Here is Beth...not quite done yet. Still needs a sleeve, arms, a head, feet...
Inside the cake...Hershey's chocolate cake with pink frosting.

Fondant frilly leaves waiting to go on the cake:

When my son saw these this morning he said, "Mom! Did you buy these?" Nope -- all made from fondant except their little antenna.

Getting ready to install the garden... call the landscaping crew!

I added some grass around the base of the fence:

A top view:

All done!!
More views:




Some things to do differently next time: the characters were SUPER HEAVY and so next time I would use fondant-covered cardboard to create a platform for them. I would also put the roses and leaves on at the same time. And for the next fun garden cake, I will make bees and stick them up on the end of skewers so they are flying through the air! buzzzzzzzzzz

This entire cake was made using marshmallow fondant... SO GOOD! I figured out the secret --add shortening and you retain that elasticity the Wilton fondant has, but at a fraction of the price. So: 16 oz. mini marshmallows, 2 pounds of powdered sugar, three tablespoons of water, 1 tablespoon of clear vanilla, and half a cup of Crisco -- melt everything (except the powdered sugar) in the microwave for about 2 minutes, then stir in the powdered sugar. I am doing it by hand and still getting it done. Oh, and coat everything in Crisco before you start -- the mixing bowl, the stirring spoon, the table... haha

So for 3 pounds of marshmallow fondant, you spend less than $4 and time vs. $20 for 5 pounds of Wilton fondant that half of the people surveyed don't like the taste of. Hmmm......

Another month and I'm ordering my Kitchen Aid mixer!! My hands are killing me!! haha

2 comments:

  1. How absolutely adorable! Where did you learn to make cats and people? Clearly not from Wilton... lol...

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  2. Haha -- no. The only reason I took the Wilton class was to have access to a teacher to pick her brain about stacking the cakes, and then as an added bonus learned how to make flowers. So now I am going on and learning to make flowers from YouTube videos and the Wilton books, and I'm friends with the teacher from my cake class, too, which is excellent.

    But the sculpting is all me -- I have been doing art my entire life and so all of those studies of people and cats just paid off here.
    But thank you! These are so fun to do!!
    Cynthia

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