Tuesday 7 May 2013

Batman & Wonder Woman Superhero Wedding Cake


When my Mum & I were asked to do a Superhero wedding cake, we were quite excited, and, in all honesty, when we found out the specifications, we were a little concerned: the bride seemed to what so many different and contrasting elements:

 - the cake topper were to be based on this cartoon:


-  Robin from this cartoon to be sat further down the cake:


- the cake was to be red

the flowers were to be baby blue and based on the small roses in the brides bouquet

At first we couldn’t get our heads round how it was going to look. I think mostly because it was unlike anything we’d been asked to do before.

But then, when we started putting the cake together we quickly found out that the bride and groom knew exactly what they were doing, and had visualized something quirky, personal, and unconventionally elegant.

My mum was put in charge of cakes, covering, and flowers. (She may have drawn the short straw!) The tiers were three different flavours: fruit, chocolate and sponge. And square. That’s not our best shape cake. As we needed red to cover the cake, we went for Renshaw's pre-coloured fondant. At £2 per 250g, it’s more expensive than colouring the icing yourself, but we knew we were going to need a fair amount and wanted to make sure the colour was consistent. Conveniently, Hobbycraft sent out a 25% discount voucher just as we were planning on stocking up!


The flowers were made using a pale blue flower paste. I love working with this flower paste. It can get sticky but stretches to get beautifully thin and dries quickly, maintaining its shape. We made a lot more flowers than we needed because we weren't sure how many we'd need. In the end we went for a couple on each corner: this meant that it didn't take away from the characters.


We probably would have used a mix of flower paste and fondant to make the figures but before we started we came across Squire’s sugar dough and decided to give this a go.

http://www.squires-shop.com/uk/product/sk-sugar-dough-white-200g
It costs £4.35 for 200g and we used 400g. Similar to the flower paste, it get quite sticky if you have warm hands but it was nice to work with. It was easy to mould, set quickly but unlike flower paste, if you decided you needed to re-mould something, and hadn't left it too long, you could do so without it going crumbly and full of bits. I would definitely use this again but probably only for a special occasion; for every day use, fondant is more than good enough.

Batman was the easiest to model. He was mostly column-like, with a nice cape to help keep him up right on the cake.


Wonder Woman, on the other hand, was a pain. She was bending from the waist to kiss Batman and this made it very difficult to keep her upright! In the end we had to package her up separately and have her put on the cake at the venue; we couldn't risk her falling off in transit!



And there was also little Robin, who was just minding his own business sat on the edge of the cake. He was fun to do - he had lots of the little details that help figures come to life.


So here is the finished thing! It was a lot of hard work and a bit of stress right at the end trying to put everything together but I enjoyed watching it come together, and, most importantly of all, the bride and groom loved it! :)




Vicky xx

4 comments:

  1. Do you possibly know who the artist is who drew the cartoon image you based your cake on?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unfortunately not :( The couple just sent me the image and asked me to use it. I did try to source the artist but didn't have any luck. If you manage to find out please do let me know!

      Delete
    2. The artist is Karen Krajenbrink. More info about the artist can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/kayjkayart/

      Delete
  2. Thanks for the post and great tips..even I also think that hard work is the most important aspect of getting success.. birthday cakes tucson az

    ReplyDelete