Transformers, Take 1

My son got one of his friends hooked on Transformers toys. I can't blame him, I loved the things when I was growing up too. Who am I kidding, I still like them. As far as toys go, they're freakin' brilliant. I offered to do the cake for my son's friend's birthday. Other than telling me he wanted a Transformers cake, it was up to me. This thing was huge. I was told there would be quite a few people at the party, so I was worried that a half sheet would not be large enough. I ended up putting two half sheets side by side. One white and one chocolate. It was so large an heavy that I ended up putting it on a piece of wrapped plywood to transport it. When I do a cake like this, I like to experiment since I was doing it as a favor for someone. I figure that as long as I don't make something hideous, they'll be happy. Not that I would present them with something that I thought was sub-par, but I still like to experiment. It's the only way I've learned this stuff.

I found a recipe for marshmallow fondant. It's easy to make and tastes a heck of a lot better than the classic stuff. Since I had to cover the cake with one sheet of fondant, I think I made a double batch. One batch will cover a half sheet pretty easily, so I simply doubled it. Considering how big this thing was, I couldn't roll it out on my silicone pastry mat. I ended up using half of the kitchen table instead. I simply greased up the table and got to rolling.

Once rolled out, transferring a sheet this large isn't easy either. I covered the cake with buttercream icing, which you have to do if you want the fondant to stick to it, and then slit two long dowels under the cake parallel to each other. Lifting the dowels, I was able to drape the fondant over the cake. After that, all you have to do is smooth it out.

I hand painted the image on the fondant. This is done by mixing the cake dye with everclear to thin it out. The result is a liquid that you can paint with. If you use water to thin the dye, it will eat the icing and get sticky. Everclear evaporates quickly and doesn't make the fondant sticky. The image took me quite a while. You can also see a little bleed-through in the middle where I may have gotten to close to the other color and they bled over on one another.

Some people really don't like fondant. I'm not a huge fan of the texture, but I don't mind a little bit of it. People at the party were really impressed with the cake, though not everyone liked the fondant. It does take some getting used to. That's why I usually put plenty of buttercream under the fondant. If you don't like the fondant, you can simply peel it off and enjoy the cake as you normally would. I really have to wonder about these cakes I see the professionals on TV make. They almost always use fondant on their cakes, mostly because you can get the coolest effects with fondant. You sacrifice flavor and texture when you do that though. It all depends on what you want the cake for.