I made this cake for my step-father’s birthday. I was thinking of doing some sort of ‘over the hill’ kind of cake and brainstormed all sorts of other kinds of ‘old’ jokes and other words for ‘old’. Ancient came to mind. I was thinking of doing a pyramid, but that seemed too simple. And then I thought, ‘what about the designs on the inside of a pyramid?’
I got some reference materials from google images, like I usually do. I picked out a few that I liked.
Painting just didn’t seem enough though. A lot of the old tomb art is sculpture in relief, so I did what I always do when looking for inspiration – I went to Michaels. They had an Egyption themed collection among their animal tubes. I came across some dinosaurs, and though they are also old, I thought that might look more like a kid’s cake. they had so many useful pieces in that pack though; cats, beetles, mummies, and the like.
I took them home and used the putty molding compound and cast them in chocolate. I think this was the first time I used luster dust to paint on metallic colours onto chocolate too.
I love the combined painting and 3d elements.
I also experimented with frosting sheets I got from Michaels. I wanted to make some straight edges along the cake, and these were perfect. The only thing is they dry out really fast and crack, so some of the edges needed some work before the cake was delivered.
I made red velvet cake so there was a contrast between the light colours on the outside and the cake when it was cut.
