These Are the Details You’re Looking For

So with the cake side of things well in hand, it was time to get the decor in order.  Another slight setback was the red shimmer dust powder I had been planning to use on my stars was far from red.  It was pink.  The plan was to paint them with that dusting color.  Now I had to revisit that stratagem to find a solution, the catch was it had to be something I could obtain locally.  I’ve mentioned earlier my local craft places do not carry much in the way of food craft items.  All wasn’t lost, I did have some options.  I could make  another batch of fondant and use no taste icing coloring.  I could also airbrush them if I could locally acquire red color.  Luckily Duff [of Charm City Cakes, Ace of Cakes] has a line of items for cakes and said line very much has a blatant in your face red coloring.  Thank $deity. If I had to go colored fondant, I needed a day for it get happy and another to dry out to harden.

These were the kinds of things I needed to know.  I couldn’t make the cake, slap on a crumb coat then freeze it until I was ready to decorate it this time around.  I mainly did this so that if the Requestor of Deliciousness wanted to freeze leftovers for later, it was possible for them.  This meant that I had to bake, cool, cut, fill, stack and frost close to D-Day.   With this in mind I knew I had to tackle the fondant first, especially to ensure it turned out well.  It was the first time I was making it and I wanted to allow for any corrections.  After that was well in hand, it was on to forming the edible decor.  I also had to test my new coloring technique for the stars to see what it would take to get the black and red I was after.  This is where I learned if you prime it, it won’t need as much airbrush color.  Honestly, I don’t know how I didn’t look at these the same way you’d paint anything else.

If you looked over the Marshmallow fondant (MMF) recipe, it’s extremely simple. Before I knew it, my batch had been kneaded to perfection.  Naturally I cut a small piece to taste it. I used one part chocolate and almond extract to two parts vanilla for flavoring.  It took the marshmallow taste down to a slight hint of it and it wasn’t overpoweringly sweet either.  Excellent.  I had read that MMF was a little friendlier for first timers and flexible in the department of fixing if it didn’t quite turn out.  I think by taste alone, it beats out traditional fondant.  I say this with a bias that I want my edible decor…edible.  And I wasn’t going to charge for traditional fondant if it’d likely not be eaten.  That’s just a waste.  This seemed to be a happy compromise.  A delicious, merry, compromise.  I made this at the start of the week, D-Day was the Saturday, just in case my first try didn’t quite pan out. It required leaving it to get happy overnight, after, it was a matter of storing it for safety until I needed it.

I take out my fondant while my tastier strawberry cake layers are baking and get with the creating.  I decided to use a mold of the Happy Drama mask, banking on the details from it would turn out better than me trying to sculpt them myself.  I also decided it was prudent to use a mold for the cap after breaking down the item into pieces to see if I could even pull that off.  Working the fondant so I could manipulate it, I pressed a flattened round to the thickness I wanted the mask to be. I lightly greased the mold so I wouldn’t fight it trying to pull the mask out later when it was mostly hardened.  I knew that where the fondant was in contact with it, would be a bit soft, but firm enough to hold the details while it finished hardening.  I had a slight issue with it being thin near the upper lip, which was easily corrected with a little water and small piece of fondant.  I trimmed off the excess then left it to harden overnight.

I used another mold for creating either filled round truffles or rounded candy bowl as the form for what would be the bottom of the graduation cap. Like the mask, I rolled the fondant to the thickness I wanted, the pressed it on the outside. Trimmed off the excess and lifted it to the light so make sure I didn’t press too much.  I made two, in case something broke.  I felt a little more confident with the mask doing that one at a time, but the caps were thinner by comparison.  For the mortarboard, I used a square lid as a template.  Once the fondant was rolled out to then point it was slightly thicker than desired, I used the lid as a cutter.  I rolled the pieces to the thickness that I wanted, checked for proportion against the cap bottom, then trimmed off the rounded edges that were left from the lid. I set them all aside to dry.

I left the tassel to the day of because I needed it to still be flexible for placement. I took a piece of fondant and rolled it into a log. Then I thinned a portion of it to serve as the top loop. I cut a small piece to serve as the clamp where sometimes the class year is affixed for display.   I flatten the bottom portion, then cut as best I could for the individuals tassels. Afterwards, I rolled them thin. I took other pieces and rolled then to match, using water and a brush to ‘glue’ them. I let it set a bit before covering the clamp piece and airbrushing it red. To make the clamp silver, I used the charcoal dusting powder lightly, then would follow with the white shimmer dust.  After a few airbrush passes, it was a matching red with everything else.  It did end up breaking at the joints, but I tackled that easily with some frosting on final placement.

I was strapped for an idea on the centerpiece because I couldn’t find a graduate topper that fit.  So I asked if it was possible to get a headshots of the Grad in her Cap and Gown, though I wasn’t quite sure how I’d mount it.  I had a nice cutout frame to place the picture in that went with the cake, but how I was going to go about putting it on eluded me.  While on a field trip to get the airbrush colors, it struck me, a megaphone.  She was a cheerleader, so I could use that as my ‘stand.’ and because it’s a simple item, I could make that easy.  I just need to cut for a rolled cone, then top the top with a thin snake of rolled fondant and use another with pressed ends for the handle. All I had to do was mount the framed picture to a skewer, then stick it through.  Center stage dilemma was now a non-issue.

I am extremely proud of how the little megaphone turned out simple because it was all hand formed.  It was nothing more than a simple cone. The trick would be to have something to wrap it on for it to dry long enough to hold its shape.  Turns out I didn’t have anything that would do the trick, so I made a fondant half ball for the bottom and used shollw straws to maintain the lines until it could hold its shape. This would also provide something I could stick the skewer in without it leaning and possibly damaging the finished megaphone. For the top, I used a thin piece of rolled out fondant and attached it using water.  I used a piece of the excess to make the handle, flattening each side. I attached it using a bit of water, then used a toothpick to make the rivet holes on each side.

Much like the tassel, I left the diploma to the day of, in case I needed it to be a but more malleable for any finishing touches.  As I had fondant to spare, it was easy to make this purely out of the fondant.  I rolled it to the thickness I wanted keeping the shape as close to a rectangle as possible.  I cut it to the shape of paper, then carefully rolled it, letting the seam settle at the bottom.  I set this to start drying while focused on the last finishing touches on D-Day.

While the mask, cap, and stars were drying, I stacked and filled the base of the cake. Since the nine inch strawberry layers weren’t thick enough for a checker, I improvised. They were thin enough to create a cool contrast with the fuller chocolate layers. I cut the seven inch layers accordingly to create the checker effect, then stacked them on a cake board of the same diameter.  Since I was tiering this, the board would sit on top of dowels to keep it from caving the cake base.  For weight, I used a Masonite round to ensure stability and ease of transport.  I covered a fourteen inch cake board with black foil.  I placed cut wax sheets in a wheel pattern to help ensure no icing gets on the foil base.  I can pull them out when I’m done frosting.   With them amply cooled, I put on the crumb coat then put them in the fridge to set up.

When the crumb layer set up, I took the cakes out. I cut the seven inch round in half to create the stage cake.  The dowels were inserted after I got a measure for making them flush. Once done with that I set the stage cake on the dowels, put on a thin coat of frosting over the half exposed cake board, which would create a hardscape for the fondant decor.  I put the built cake in the fridge and went to work coloring outside the lines.

I used the charcoal dusting powder to ‘paint’ the cap and mortarboard.  I learned from coloring the stars that I achieved the black color I was after by airbrushing them after I used the dusting powder.  I’d by lying if I didn’t tell you it was a bonafide ‘Duh’ moment- prime then paint…moron.  Don’t fret, I apologize to myself later for calling me names.  When the color dries, I brushed on white shimmer powder on the cap bottom’s interior and dusted some on the exterior.  I used fondant scraps to make the top button, and color that as well.  I used the same dust then airbrush for the red stars, though they required a few more passes to go from pink to red. I finished them with the pink shimmer to make then shine in the light.

Now…the mask.  I breathed down a moment of slight panic. I had little clue how to approach it.  Knowing I had to color the mouth and eyes black, I went from there. I filled in the brows after going over the entire mask with the white shimmer powder. I finished it by lightly brushing the cheeks with the pink shimmer, then a little on the lips.  As they say, less is more.  It was one of my favorite pieces until I made that megaphone.

When the megaphone was ready for make-up, I took advantage of the edible markers I picked up.  I needed the finer detailing these would provide.  I modeled the color scheme after the cheerleader uniforms- red to black to white.  I learned the silver coloring trick when I brushed the top and handle pieces with the brush I had been using for the charcoal dusting powder, making them a faint gray, then finished with the white shimmer.  It yielded a silver finish that looked like metal.  To give the rivets depth, I used a toothpick loaded with the charcoal powder on it and shaded them.

Now it was off to prep the non-edible decorations.  I resized the picture to fit the frame.  I used the lip of a blank chipboard keepsake box to cover the raw back of the framed picture.  It gave me a better means to mount the picture while creating a finished look.  Cutting the skewer to size, the top rested on the inside of the lid, the rest stuck into the megaphone, clearing the top of it and due to the half ball on the bottom, stayed in place.

I used beading wire to mount the lettering that would float atop the star spray and ribbons on top of the cake.  I also used it to string together the beaded jewels that would dangle from the cake spears.  They tied in with the classic elegance I had used in the look of the finished frosted cake.

All the pieces were ready for their close up.  It was time to get building.