Ferrari California Cake Tutorial

I've ALWAYS admired those who are for up a challenge in making a car cake; even more so when the cake is beautifully done.  I must admit; car cakes looked so intimidating, I never really had a burning desire to try making one just to see how it'll turn out or simply to practice.  Perhaps it's laziness. lol!!!  This time, I got a client requested to make a Ferrari California model.  I was excited, yet a bit hesitant.  But with my brother/animation artist/partner's help, we somehow made it work.  

The key to make any cake that mimics something we see all the time and familiar with, such as the Minion Cake, my number 1 rule is always the same: Proportion, Clean workmanship, and Details.  However, don't worry too much about how the cars are made structurally.  You are making an illusion of a car rather than making a car.  With that said, let's get started!

1. Make your templates
- Templates are important, it will help to guide you through sculpting and trimming your stacked cakes. Give you a closer idea of what size the cake may be.

2. Get cake layers ready
- Shape the cake layers, fill between the layers, crumb coats. You know the drill! :)

3. Frost over all shape
- Take your car profile template, stick them next to the cake, so you know how much more cake to trim and buttercream to fill.

4. Trim the sides
- Make sure you Google a lot of pictures to help you understand the curves of the car.
- When yousculpt the cake, trim a little more than you think you need. Because after you trim the cake, you will apply a layer of buttercream. On top of that, there's another layer of fondant.  This way the end result of the car won't be too thick and look less like a cartoon toy car. 

 5. Frost and shape
- Use small offset round tip spatula to frost and make necessary curves.
- Use round cookie cutter to shape the tire area, so you will get clean lines on the round shape.
- Make sure to refer back to your templates to help keeping the shape as close to the right proportion.
- In this case, I was making a white car out of red velvet cake, so I had to make sure the frosting was as white as possible.  This is to prevent the car looking "pink" after being covered as the fondant might be too thin.

6. Cover with fondant
- Smooth all over the body of the car with your fingers and palms.
- Use modeling tools to form the edges on windows, hood, bumper, area, etc. 

 

7. Add details
- Make templates to help making windows cut outs.
- Add black rounds on tire areas to create shadow.
- Use red gumpaste to create lights. Utilize round tip piping tips to add circle textures on lights.  

8. Rims and Cake board
- Cut out thin lines of strips and line them up like in the photos.  Add touch of water with thin brush between gumpaste pieces to glue them together. After it's dried, use red food coloring with red luster dust mix, paint over the rims.  When it's all dried, use black food coloring to paint the infamous Ferrari logo!
- I'm big on presentation. When the cake looks great, an appropriate cake board should go with it to give it a great over all look.  In this case I've rolled out a thin layer of grey fondant to cover the cake board, then used cobble stone impression mat, pressed the mat all over the board.

9. Use an edible color printer
- While I'm big on making things by hand, I also believe when it comes to certain details, it is Okay to use a printer; to help enhance the look.  In this case, I've printed the very fine detail logos that I know for sure won't look good if I paint it free hand.

10. More details
- As you add more details, here are some more tips. Use corn syrup to brush shine over the light area. Corn syrup gives the look of the glass. It's a good and fun detail to add to your cake.

Here are better pictures of the finished cake.  Hope you guys have fun making it!

Minion Cake Tutorial

Who like Minions?  MEEEEE!!!!!  One of the best part of my jobs is to make cakes fun, and especially when it's a fun cartoon character.   :)

Recently I've got a request to make a Minion cake.  As a cake decorator, I find myself to be very picky when it comes to replicating a design that is well known.  The proportion and shapes have to be right; otherwise the end product will look awkward.  It is different than if you were to create something, the design is totally yours, there's nothing else to reference to. Therefore, I'm sharing with you tips on how to make the the foundation cake.

1. Figure out the size of your cake

- I'm making the cake approximately 10" tall.

- I printed out an image of the Minion; make sure the body comes out approximately 10" in length (height).  Then measure the width, which came out to be 7". Now you get an idea of how big you're making your foundation cake; by using 7" cake pans, and bake however many layers that it takes to build up to a 10" tall cake.  

- Your cake layer maybe 3/4" thick, or 1", or 1.5".  Just make sure you have enough cake layers.
- Cake out the shape of Minion's body and its outline as template for later use.

2. Stacking and crumb coating

- Carefully stack and crumb coat the cake layers evenly. 

- In this photo, I've trimmed off the side of the cake, to make the cake smaller than the 7" cake board.
- Chill the cake for at least a few hours, so it will be a lot easier for you shape the cake later.

3. Trim the cake
- Use the Minion body template, you'll get an idea of how much to trim on top of the cake and bottom of the Minion body.
- Notice most Minion cakes out there keep the cake as a tube with just a round top. Trim the bottom edge gives your Minion cake a nice touch of detail! Give him a butt will ya?! ;)

4. Crumb coating the trimmed cake 

- Before chilling the cake, seal it. Crumb coat the cake with a thin layer of buttercream.  I used two different bench scraper. Use the large one to do an over all body shaping, a small one that does a rough shaping for the head and butt area.

5.  Frost 

- Add a nice layer, of buttercream to help giving the cake more structure.
- Chill the cake over night.








6. Measure

- Take your Minion body outline template next to the frosted and chilled cake.  Get an idea if you need to fix anything, check the shape of the Minion head, straight lines on the side of Minion's body, curve on the bottom of the Minion butt.
- Cake right now is nice and chilled, perfect timing to make sure the surface is smooth, free of cavity to prevent air pockets.





7. Fondant
- Cover the cake with fondant and trim fondant.

8. Set it on stage!

- Set and glue the cake on a cake board.
- Make sure to let it sit for a bit, let glue dry, so the cake doesn't move.










9. Cover cake board and put Minion's pants on!

- Roll out a wide strip of fondant and cover the cake board.
- Roller another thin strip of fondant if the edge wasn't perfect; in this case, I had to do this layer to make sure the edge was nice and clean.
- Use your Minion body template, the guide will tell you how wide to make a blue strip to cover around the bottom of Minion's body.

PS.  My #1 cake board rule is ALWAYS cover the cake board. Not only the final presentation looks good, the cake board won't out shine your cake! Literally! :)  And don't forget about the ribbon too!


10. Decorate your Minion
- Now the body is all done, rest is up to you guys! One eye, two eyes, hats, flower, any type accessory, etc.
- Use plastic wrap like your best friend. You can't hold their little arms, legs, and feet until they set in place.  Use the plastic wrap, wrap around the body to help holding their arms and feet up.
- Paint the goggle with silver dust.

 

11. Finishing
- Customize it, add any kind of extra decorations to your Minion. Make the over all design look fuller, then you're all set! :)

Blog Blog Blog!

Hi All!

Finally, after many requests, I've decided that I need to make time and start blogging for our Delicious Arts followers. I'll be sharing all the the fun cakes that I have been making. And of course, for the fellow cake decorators, sharing tips on how to make them!

For those of you who live in Southern California, classes will be available when our retail shop opens in October!  Please stay tuned! :)