This year was Allie's golden birthday so I wanted to make sure I took things to a new level. Allie is a big fan of books, so I decided to try that stack of books cake, using her current favorite series as my model. This meant I needed 5 books, which made for a very tall cake. I also wanted to try my hand at modeling paste to see if I could make a character which looked okay.
The cake was a challenge as I had to cover each cake separately and then get them to stack without bending. The edges had to be propped up, and they still got a little saggy, but I was hoping that would give a "used book" kind of feel. I then attempted to dust them with darkening powder to make them have some dimension, but the condensation got the powder wet and it was hard to get it to spread lightly. The same happened with the gold dust so in the end the gold was a little more overpowering than I intended. I also found that using the dust as a paint for the words was a challenge as the pressure to fit all the letters in the small space made it feel a little less professional than I wanted. But maybe that's my perfectionism coming through.
The character made out of modeling paste turned out wonderfully. I attempted to make Allie and in the end I think we were all impressed how close it came. The paste was reasonably easy to work with, but dried quickly so there were times I had to move quickly. Fortunately it made for a nice stiff character on the cake.
Overall the new techniques I tried worked, but I learned a lot about dusting powder and molding paste which makes me interested in using them again, but also hesitant. We'll see which wins...
