Link: http://www.threadcakes.com/entries/view/1888

This is my first time entering Threadcakes! I was afraid to make something as I’m constantly in awe of the massive talent from past years’ entries.

I picked Make Art not War by Christopher Phillips as a creative challenge and testing myself on several techniques – modelling, flower making, carving, structure, watercolour painting, and now a favourite; playing with isomalt.

When I started, I planned the size that I wanted to make this cake. Living alone meant needing to eat the whole cake which I’d rather not do, so I went for a size that I could achieve and finish it up at the same time, gobble gobble. I went for a 12 inch (30cm) scaled size of the cake, and started baking my favourite sour cream vanilla cake. For this project, I paired it with a new favourite, lemon ganache. It goes oh so well! I did most of the decorative elements ahead of time – the figurines which took the longest, and the flowers. Gum paste was largely used for this project, though I used modelling chocolate as the base for building the shape of my figurines. Figurines are not my strongest, so these took me a while to figure out dimensions and sizes. It was also a fairly new attempt to use armature wire to build and create my figurines, so I was pretty excited that I’ve learned more with this entry. The lotus flowers are also a new flower for me to learn, from making the seed pod to texturing and building the flower petal by petal. The little cherry blossom was made using old school pulled flower method – pretty chuffed with how it turned out!

The cake took a while to build. From the carving to the colouring process took me a few days. I work a full time job, so my time after work is devoted to making this entry. The carving and ganache work took me a night, and covering the cake took me another night. The koi was covered in a modelling chocolate mix with fondant, so I had plenty of time to work with it. Scales were carefully applied to the koi using plain fondant. The fins and tail were made out of the remaining fondant-modelling chocolate mix.

I used The Painted Box’s method of making my edible watercolours using gel colours and rose spirit/decorator’s alcohol. The artwork has such a beautiful watercolour that I wanted to achieve that in an edible medium. This was a therapeutic time to do this, which took me all night once again.

My biggest challenge on this cake was the isomalt wave. This is my first time playing with it, and I was very nervous working with it. Needless to say, fingers were burning with the heat from the sugar despite wearing latex and cotton gloves. I love the effect of the wave and its translucent effect that it gives.

Overall this beautiful entry took me ten days, give and take, and I hope you like it as much as I am pleased that I made it to the end. Thank you!