Bambi's Revenge

My Mother-in-law asked me to make a birthday cake for my father-in-law and cousin Matt for Thanksgiving. I knew that a whole cake probably wouldn't make the trip in one piece so I made a gumpaste topper for the cake. I made the deer and furniture using gumpaste I had colored with gel colors. Gumpaste is just a fancy sugar dough that dries extremely hard. It is technically edible but it would be a teeth breaker. You can buy it at your local craft stores or use a recipe from the internet. Making your own usually requires Tylose and Guclose, which can be hard to find.

I made the chair and lamp first and let them dry hard. Next I made the deer and the accesories on the chair. It may be hard to see but there is a little remote, newspaper, and big red pillow behind the deer. I made the horns in advance and layed them in bottle caps to dry into the rounded shape. Finally I made the wood looking floor by covering a cake board with marbalized fondant and cutting the boards into it. I placed everything onto the cake board and packed it into a big box with no slip grip cloth underneath. The cake topper made the long trip with ease.

When it came time to assemble the cake I frosted the entire cake, placed the topper on the top and then piped around the edge of the topper so that it would look like part of the cake. The one thing you must do is make sure the cake is level since you will have a perfectly flat cake board sitting on top of the cake.

I didn't have a lot of my supplies with me when I made the cake so it didn't come out as professional as I would have liked. However, everyone there still loved the cake.

Now go buy some gumpaste and see what you can come up with. Revert back to the good old days of playdough. It's ok, I won't tell anyone.