Men shoe cake tutorial by Gulnaz Mitchell

I made this cake for my husband’s birthday. I used my traditional Russian Honey cake recipe which is my husband’s favourite cake. But you can use any other cake recipe (except for carrot cake because it will be too crumbly).

First, I shaped the cake into a shoe using a knife; I also used a teaspoon to scope out some cake to make a hollow part around the ankle.

I covered the shoe shaped cake with white chocolate ganache using a spatula and I used a teaspoon for the hollow. After the ganache set, I smoothed it with a hot spatula (and hot teaspoon for the hollow part around the ankle) that I had dipped in boiling water. This helps give the ganache a nice smooth surface for the fondant.

You can use any colour of fondant you like. I wanted to have a particular shoe colour, so I rolled white fondant which I subsequently painted. I first put fondant on the front part of the shoe. It does not matter what fondant size you use, as long as it covers the front part of the shoe. Excess fondant was cut off using a pizza cutter.

I made a template and cut 2 fondant pieces to overlap the shoe.

I used a designer quilting tool to make stiches and swapped to the other side of this tool to make holes for shoe laces.

I next cut out little fondant strips for the back of the shoe and used the quilting wheel tool to make stiches.

After this it is time to paint the shoe. I don’t have an airbrush, so I used a normal paint brush and gel colours – Wilton Brown, Black and a little touch of Red mixed with a little bit of vodka or you can use gin. I put a little bit more black colour on the front of the shoe to achieve a natural look. I used Wilton Ivory gel colour for the hollow part around the ankle.

The shoe had a horrible shine after “painting”, but don’t panic, it will dry and this shine will disappear the next day. I then rolled thin strips of black fondant and put these around the shoe to form a sole and used my fingers to make square soles on the front and back of the shoe (sorry I forgot to take the picture). I then used black strips of fondant for shoe laces.
And, viola, here is a shoe and it is edible!
I hope you enjoyed my tutorial! But my family definitely enjoyed “daddy’s shoe”