Company Name: Eat Cake Party
Website: https://www.eatcakeparty.co.za
Location: Wellington, Western Cape, South Africa
Featured Cake: Luca’s Winnie the Pooh Tree Cake
Make sure that you tweet #FondantFriday @cakejournal!
Cake Artist: Dot Klerck started making cakes for her 4 Kids about 14 years ago then started in business 5 years ago. She studied sculpture and design and used these skills to both design and construct his cakes. Because Dot is self taught it took a while before her skill level caught up with his cake imagination! Dot hopes both his skill and imagination will grow as she strives to push the limits with cake and sugar art.
About the Cake:
This tree cake stands about 50cm tall and was such fun to create! I’m sure we’re all asked to make Disney cakes over and over again…I just wanted to do something different! This is on a large 50cm base and cake dummy. I use wooden dowels for support of each tree limb. The branch that holds the hanging tire swing is also a dowel, wired onto the other support dowel. I use the dummy base to give extra support for my dowels. I no longer use this type of support, but this was a trial for me and worked well in this case.
Each of the Disney characters are made in advance using basic modeling skills. I made Heffalump’s face once I placed him as I knew I’d need to have him peeking round the tree, but wasn’t sure until the tree was complete!
The tire I made 2 days before and put a wire support inside. The tire tread is made with a icing roller tool.
It is attached using thick wire and then covered with ‘rope’.
The tree is made up of one 20cm cake layer with several more 15cm cakes stacked on top until the branching of the trunk. I then cut out smaller rings of cake to place on the dowels until they were at the right length. Once the cake is placed, trim the cake to get a good tree shape. I like to exaggerate my shape..it adds drama! I love drama!
The green balls on the tree are cake pops covered with green fondant. The red balloon is also a cake pop! They add some fun to the cake especially for the kids who don’t really like cake !The board needs to be covered before starting the tree bark.
Once the cake is ganached, I add some fondant twists to make roots. Start about 6-8cm above the base ending about 3-5 along the base. This adds an extra gnarly look to the trunk. The fondant bark is done in panels and all with a sharp knife, cutting deep and shallow cuts all over the panel.
I measure each piece roughly from top to bottom and each panel is about 8-10cm wide and rolled about 0,5cm thick, this enables me to ‘stretch’ the cut marks and gives it a great grain in the wood. Make sure that the last join is at the back of the cake.
Once the ‘wood’ is on, I place the cake pops using long sticks for extra support. Adding round edged leaves gives a Disney finish to the tree!
One can either dust the bark with powder color to create some depth of color, I use about 3 different shades of brown, or an airbrush is best- also 3 shades from light to dark in all the deep cuts and shadows.
Add the characters and place some daisy flowers to finish off the board. It was my son that suggested a bee and some honey in the hole in the tree, how clever, …this really brought the whole design together and the red balloon balances the colors and adds some fun!
“This tree cake stands about 50cm tall and was such fun to create! I’m sure we’re all asked to make Disney cakes over and over again…I just wanted to do something different! This is on a large 50cm base and cake dummy. I use wooden dowels for support of each tree limb. The branch that holds the hanging tire swing is also a dowel, wired onto the other support dowel. I use the dummy base to give extra support for my dowels. I no longer use this type of support, but this was a trial for me and worked well in this case.
I love this cake. I’m a Winnie the Pooh lover from way back. During those olden days when the ONLY place you could ever find Pooh things was the baby department of Sears. You rarely even found things at Disney World let alone any other retail location in the states. That’s why my very first Pooh watch was technically a man’s watch, they didn’t even have a woman’s. (which I thought was odd). But back to this cake. The wood on the tree is prize winning as far as I can see. Is Owl anywhere in the tree? The picture is a little dark so I can’t quite tell. Also, by any chance do you have Christopher Robin or Kanga or little Roo on the other side of the cake? I like it that you have a Heffalump in it. So often Heffalumps and Woozles are left out of Pooh things. The new fondant and the new techniques they have to make things easier are taking much of the fear out of trying projects like this. Thanks for sharing Pooh and his friends with us!