[Arishenka]

Огромная благодарность Miriam Gaulton за Мастер-класс





























































The cake I used is white chocolate mudcake, coz it's just so yummy! My 5 year old nephew helped me bake a couple of the cakes (took awhile coz he kept having to tell me how good he was doing!) and later helped (many many times) with taste testing the cake! Cutoffs kept disappearing from my bench!

Once 3 cakes were baked and some white choc ganache mixed up I cut the cake to the shape of the deer and then covered in ganache. I stuck 2 bits of dried spaghetti in the nose just to make sure it held up, and covered the cake and then the board in fondant. The ears and the antlers are made with fondant with tylose added.

Once fondant is all dry it is time for painting. The head of the deer is painted with greys and a bit of blue, and drybrushed with different shades of grey and black/white. The whole landscape was painted freehand, just copying what was on the design, building up the different layers of colour. I was quite excited leading up to that bit but then I started and thought 'Crap what have I got myself into!' I really thought I had bitten off more than I could chew and did not believe it was going to look anything like the picture. But as I progressed and it really came to life I started to believe it might look kinda good! The paints I used were edible dust colours mixed with a dipping solution used for colouring sugar flowers.

It took a fair while to get all the painting done, took quite a few days for the whole process that I was starting to get worried I would run out of time in terms of being able to still eat the cake! Once all painting was done I attached the ears to the head. Because the deer is looking to the side, the ear on it's left should really sit a bit higher than the other one. To keep everything edible I used some of the blue sugarpaste in lumps on the board to support the ear (and later the antler on the same side) with bits of dried spaghetti stuck in the middle. It means you can see these from the side but looking at it in the same way as the original desin you can't notice them. Last things were to add the eyes and paint them, paint the antlers and place them on the board. Very final thing was putting confectioners glaze on the nose and eyes to give then a bit of a shine.