My nephew just turned 4 this weekend. My hubby and I traveled back across the barren wasteland that is Western Kansas, and went to his birthday party! The day before, my mom and I spent about 3 hours assembling this cake.
Specs:
5 layers of chocolate cake
Rich and creamy chocolate buttercream between the layers
Weight: 15 pounds completed
Covered in Milk chocolate modeling clay dyed black
May the fours be with you!
Demolished head cake.
Chocolate Modeling Clay
To be fair, this was my first time using chocolate modeling clay at all, let alone to cover a massive head cake. It works like fondant but tastes much better--closer to the flavor of a vanilla tootsie roll. Simple ingredients too: melted chocolate and corn syrup.
If I were to do it again, I'd make white chocolate modeling clay and experiment with airbrushing or painting it the color I want. The black wasn't worked all through the white chocolate mixture so there were splotches of little white specks.
Sculpting the cake
Sculpting this cake wasn't as hard or bad as I thought it'd be. I just made sure to use good strong chocolate cake recipes--not ones that turn out really moist or airy. I froze all my layers before I stacked them and after filling them with butter cream, froze it a bit more. It made for shaving off pieces of cake much easier! I used a serrated knife and took off a bit at a time, looking at it as I went. For the face, I used a smaller knife to cut into the cake. I then covered the whole thing in butter cream so the chocolate modeling clay would adhere to it.
Rolling out the Clay
I really wished I would have bought my mat sooner! I found out about the mat on a couple of other decorating blogs and youtube. It came in the mail today, not three days ago when I needed it. I couldn't roll out the chocolate clay in too big of pieces because A. I failed to microwave it for a few seconds to warm it up and B. I didn't have enough workspace. I think if I'd have used the mat, I'd been in a better position. Check out these two sites-- basically, it's two pieces of large nonstick plastic that you place the fondant between and roll it out. You lift one piece off and then set it on the cake instead of letting the fondant drape or fall off your usual rolling pin or hand method.
For more information or ordering
For a video on the product
If I had to do it over, I'd have taken more time and better care in rolling out one large piece of modeling clay rather than trying to piece it together. I'm pretty happy with the result though! My nephew seemed to like it and it tasted great!
