So I wasn't aware that Richard Scarry lurked in my subconscious, but those of you familiar with the show will without a doubt find it difficult to not associate it with this cake. The worm? That flies around the helicopter? Don't worry about it.
The truth is, I didn't personally make the association until I had finished the thing. After last week's ill-prepared creation, I made a rule for myself that I would always sketch out ideas, and be required to post the winning sketch on this blog. Cake blog. Clog, if you will. This one came to me during my Graphic Systems class. I think that doodling during a grad school class is frowned upon, but this idea came to me like a sneeze. It was very sudden, would've felt weird to suppress, and keeping my eyes open was not an option. Also, it's art school. So whatever.
I felt a little tense as I rolled out the fondant I had dyed green. You may remember - the past couple weeks I've been having issues wrapping the cake. The fondant kept breaking. I came to the conclusion that I was abusing the microwave trick, so this week I avoided the microwave completely. Not totally sure that my theory wasn't based in nothing, I nervously draped the fondant and told Donnelly to "come take a picture of how nervous I am."
Turns out I was right, I think. I had no major problems wrapping the cake. I did, however, run into an issue that I've been having with every cake I've ever decorated without cousin/cake-mentor Kelly by my side. The goal is for the edge of the cake to be like, razor sharp. Imagine the defined right angles of a marble staircase. Now imagine those sharp edges replaced by marshmallows. That's what I'm dealing with, here. I need to not rely on the buttercream to fill in the flaws of the cake form, and instead spend more time shaping the cake itself. Look at me, learning.
Before I got to the ass-ache that was creating the worm, I tried a technique that, needless to say, did not turn out well. I can't remember if I heard about this technique somewhere, or if I had invented it and convinced myself that it would look GREAT despite about 4 different reasons why it would probably end up looking AWFUL. As you can see - I cut a "grass" form out of green fondant, sloppily slathered white frosting onto said form, and proceeded to press green sprinkle-balls into the limps. The contrast of the green-on-white-on-green reminds me of something I would create in a school as a child and bring home to my mother, where it would be filed into the "Kristin - Sentimental" hanging folder in her giant filing cabinet. So I scrapped that idea and went with the plain green grass form.
Oh, the worm. Stupid, stupid worm. This process taught me my first lesson in sculpting with fondant, which was...avoid it, because it's not easy. I realize that that is less of a lesson and more of a cop-out. Don't worry. I feel obligated to work on techniques that I struggle with, so you can look forward to future sculpting attempts, I'm sure.
For the worm, I tested out a few different inner materials (Charleston Chew, taffy, etc) before deciding that rice krispie treats were best for fondant framework. Shaping them into the arcs was the easy part - the difficulty came when I tried to wrap them in brown fondant and realized that unlike clay, fondant repair is tricky. It is extremely difficult to erase a seam and smooth everything over. Especially with this dumb-ass shape. You can only do so much repair by running shortening on a seam, and water is out - it just breaks down the fondant. S, yes. The worm is a little lumpy.
Next came the assembly, which was probably my highest cause of anxiety. I knew that the worm segments were going to be bulky, so I used long skewers to hold the things in place. This process went smoothly, all things considered.
A few people stopped by to enjoy some cake and comedy (Zach Galifianakis DVD). This week I tried making a sweet potato cake, to which Colin responded "Yikes, I do not like sweet potatoes." Luckily for him, it tasted nothing like sweet potatoes, and a lot like carrot cake. A root vegetable is a root vegetable is a root vegetable, I guess.
In the end, the worm emerged as one from the cake, and planted itself on the kitchen counter, where it would remain for the next few days until someone decided that no one was going to eat it, probably.
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