VW Beetle Cake Topper Progress

My Nana turns 70 this week, so a few months ago I contacted the whole family and told them we were going to Nana's home town for dinner and a big family photo to give her as a present. Nana lives in Maryborough, Qld and we are in Brisbane. The rest of the family is in Gladstone and Rockhampton, so it made the most sense to meet in Maryborough which is half way. I took the opportunity to think of an awesome cake to make as just yet another chance to bake and create!

So about a month ago or so I made some Rice Krispie Treats (recipe here) and before they had gone completely hard, I moulded a VW Beetle shape with the intent to cover and decorate with fondant and gum paste.

***I should explain; Nana drove a 1969 VW Beetle from about 1972 - circa 2000. That's a fair while. The original colour of the car was racing car green (deep dark green) but at some point, not too sure when, she had it repainted white. It was an awesome car, one of the first that I drove as a new driver and I loved it. Unfortunately, rust and extremely high mechanic bills forced the little bug off the road, but it'll always remain fondly in my memory. When I tried to think of what I could do that would best suit my Nana.....there was no other choice.***

So, anyway, I moulded the shape out of Rice Krispie Treats, and idea that I had seen on Ace Of Cakes. I don't know what I would do without the food channel. It worked out pretty well, and then I wrapped it up in baking paper and cling film and put it in the freezer. The treats only last a couple of days out of the fridge according to the website. I doubt anyone is going to eat it, but I still didn't want it to go bad.

As per my last post, I explained that my tylose gum paste didn't seem to be so successful, but yesterday I went to Big W and bought a pasta maker and a scalpul and conditioned some gum paste, and it worked brilliantly. The only regret I have is that I rolled out the main covering layer too thinly and you can see the bumps of the rice bubbles BUT by the time I glued it on, I just decided that I am the most picky, and that most people will be more impressed that it looks like a bug than the actual detail.

Once I covered in the main piece of white gum paste, I cut out two pieces for the doors, and then marked in the creases which I will be embellishing with silver paint later. Then for the tyres, I tried placing a flat piece of black on top of the wheels I moulded with the rice bubbles, but it looked ridiculous, so what I had to do, using my trusty knife, I cut out a hole so I could squish a ball of black gum paste in and then spread it out to be a tyre size and shape. I plan to put hub caps with the VW logo on them, but I was too tired to bother with that last night. Then I made some bumpers, which I will paint silver and I made a couple of licence plates which I will either paint with NANA or NANA 70 or something like that. Depends on my steady hand. I found out that if you mix a little of the gel colour with a tiny bit of vodka, using a super fine paint brush, you can use it as a paint.

I put two tiny blossom flowers on the front, which I will embelish with silver and yellow maybe later. And finally, I recovered the wheel covers with white, so that the car looked more finished. Oh, and I cut out grey bits for the windows and there are two door handles which I will paint silver.

So what I have to do; paint details silver, make a logo for the boot (or where the motor actually is), make 4 hub caps, paint the license plates and make thin borders around the windows and doors to make the car feel 'finished' I plan to put some of the gum paste through the spaghetti feature of the pasta maker.

You can still see rice krispie treat around the base of the car, which I will some how conceal with flowers most likely, to keep in line with the theme.

The party is this Saturday, and today is Monday so.....

Monday - vacuum up all the icing sugar that fell on the floor last night, and do the dishes haha
Tuesday - finish off details of car
Wednesday - make fondant
Thursday - bake cake & make ganache
Friday - ice cake with ganache & fondant & decorate
Saturday - drive to Maryborough

better get a wriggle on

Gum Paste....simple enough concept wouldn't you say?

So the next cab off the rank cakewise is Nana's 70th birthday cake. Its going to be a round chocolate mud cake (I found a beautiful recipe and its just the best cake I've ever made) covered in light yellow fondant, covered in white with yellow centre tiny blossom flowers and on top is a white VW Beetle made of rice krispie treats and decorated with gumpaste. Sounds simple enough?

I have made gum paste once before using a recipe that included gum trag - but apparently its hard to come by and grossly expensive. I did find it in one shop, but I thought that if I am planning to do many cakes in the future, I need to make it cost effective as well. I did a bit of research and discovered that there are a few recipes using tylose powder which is I believe a vegetable gum powder. I watched a few youtube videos, no problem easy to make.

After I beat the egg whites slightly & added in the icing sugar, it said to add the tylose slowly - I should have added it in one go. I also should have used dough hooks instead of egg beaters, but lesson learned. I only have a hand mixer, so I'm sure a stand alone mixer would have been much easier. Anyway, not all the tylose mixed in quite properly, so I had to remove a few hard lumps when I was kneading the rest of the icing sugar in.

I got it to the consistency that I thought was correct, and then I put it in the fridge to rest over night as per instructions. The next day I played with a bit, coloured it, tried to add more shortening, more icing sugar, more tylose powder, and I tried to find instructions on what to do if it goes wrong, but no luck. Every time I tried to roll it into a ball, it would have creases and just wasn't the consistency of what I believed it should be.

I then found a YouTube lady who used a slightly well actually a very different recipe that she had developed over the years, and upon watching her later 'working with gum paste' videos, I realised that you have to condition the gum paste before using it. She uses a pasta maker and then rolls it back together and then pasta machine and then clumps it back together. Once I rolled it out a few times and then kneaded it for a while it worked really well when I rolled it out and cut out all the tiny blossoms. The texture was much smoother, but without a pasta machine, my hands were aching, and I had only really done a small portion of the actual work required.

Today, I am going to buy a pasta machine, I can't do the bug without it, unless I plan to spend hours rolling out....I don't.

I will credit Linda for her advice on gum paste conditioning, and you can check out her blog and her YouTube instructionals at the below link.

http://creativedesignsforcakes.blogspot.com

Once I finish the cake, I'll post all the photos. Can't wait to see the finished product. I can only hope that it really turns out as great as it does in my head