Hi all,
I really need your help here. My DD is turning 4 in a few months and has requested a cake with Jessie and Bullseye (Toy Story) for her Birthday. I have come up with what I think is a great original idea which, if I pull it off, should be a lot of fun to make and should hopefully look fantastic the only problem is I have no idea how to go about putting my idea into practice.

The thought I had was to recreat this sceen from Toy Story 2. The idea I had on how to do it was to make 2 square cakes as the foam packing and ice with buttercream icing (mmmmm yummy) Then somehow manage to scoop the appropriate size shapes out of the square and make figures to embed in the cake. Question is what do I make the figures out of and how do I embed them into the cake. Any ideas thoughts and suggestions gratefully accepted

I'm not that experienced but I can tell you how I would attempt...

I would make the "pieces" out of rice Krispy Treats, cover with gumpaste or modeling chocolate.

When complete, you can use the pieces you have to create a "pattern." Place pattern on top of cake and carve away.

use a template to cut the areas out (just bigger than the figures will be)...ice inside cutouts (use thinned out icing). Make figures out of fondant, or gumpaste, or a combination (I prefer combination). Use the template used for cutting out as the guide for size of characters...make them ahead of time (so, this will probably in somewhat reverse order...find template, make figures, use same template as guide to cut out cake). I think it's going to look adorable! I can't wait to see it finished!

they don't even need to be full figures...the front half then placed inside cutout will give illusion a complete figure is in there.

WOW thanks for the quick replies.

Last year I made her an Ice Age themed cake and I made figures out of fondant which had gum trag added to make it set nice and hard and was quite happy with how if turned out given that it was the first time I had ever tried to do anything like that and certainly the first time I had ever worked with fondant so I am thinking I might end up going with the same thing this year unless something else would work better. I am very much a novice when it comes to cake decorating so I think I need my head read with some the complicated ideas I come up with but what can I say, I like to set myself a challenge lol. I will hopefully be getting my hands on some Jessie and Bullseye toys soon and I will be using them to model off and basically make the figures from scratch using them as models eeeek.

This is last years cake Ice Age Cake

If you get the toys, use them to make molds of 'em. (Michael's has some food safe molding stuff (a mold can also be made with gumpaste) use whatever medium you wish with the molds...even chocolate!)

ETA: the link...also, there's the MYOM stuffs too
here is the kind sold at Michael's
http://www.flickr.com/photos/craftygoat/2223733217/sizes/o/