Огромная благодарность Erin Schwartz за Мастер-класс
To start, I planned out my simple structure (in a way that would create the illusion of my piece standing on the tip of his beard) and decided what unique cake flavor would make this cake cohesive from the inside out. I felt inspired by different spices, went to a local shop and came across a Bombay Chai tea blend! BINGO! That’s what I wanted to do! I steeped a hearty amount of the tea in my milk for the cake; this was a first for me, but oh man did I enjoy the results! Turns out you can have your tea and eat it too! I wanted an icing that complimented the cake, so I went with a Saigon Cinnamon and Vanilla Bean American Buttercream!
I stacked up my cakes (6,7 and 8 inch rounds), giving a hearty filling of icing in between each layer. After the head of the cake was stacked, I carved away to give it the proper shape and used homemade ganache to cover the outside. As I got a better visual I added another two layers of cake to the top of the head (where the snake wraps).
Now came the time consuming part! Using my own modeling chocolate mixed with fondant; I began to sculpt the features of the cake. I never went to art school so working on a piece like this is always a challenge for me. Honestly, I probably sculpted every spot of this cake at least two or three times, constantly checking with the original design. I even made great progress in a few hours and then felt the face was too wide and cut off his cheeks and started that part over again. It too a long time, but it’s really fun seeing the piece come to life!
After I was happy with the sculpting, I mixed rice cereal and marshmallows to help me build up the curves of the snake a bit. As my base for the skin tone, I speckled the surface with 6 or 7 different colors so that it mimics real skin (which is not one solid color). I used different techniques to sculpt and color-I got to use my favorite tool (my Dresden tool) for the beard texture!
The snake’s skin started as a light green that I wet washed with a diluted black food coloring and wiped it away, leaving the black in the crevices (another first!). To make the texture, I used pliers to reshape a pumpkin-carving tool into a shape that would work. Once that dried, I dry brushed some beautiful luster colors to give it a magical iridescence. Painting the eyes a midnight blue made the piece quite creepy, but once that dried and I painted on the tiny galaxy stars, it really gave it life!
Since this design had such a spell on me, I had to include a special effect! So, I used 3 extremely tiny red LED lights (two for the snake’s eyes and one for the bindi piece). I used red isomalt to make the snake eyes and gem for the head and placed that over the LEDs. Turning those lights on for the first time with the isomalt sugar over it was really exciting! The glowing of the red eyes and head jewel mean the man and snake are communicating.
МК-Tutorial V5
