[B]Please Help![/b] Cake Piece Fell Apart!
Decorating By KittisKakes Updated 13 Feb 2006 , 2:12pm by beachcakes
I really need some help! I am making a 3D football helmet for tomorrow. This is my 8th one, so I've gotten pretty comfortable in making them. I went to put the face mask on and it started to fall apart on me. All 4 posts that insert into the cake fell off. I thought I could "glue" them back on, but when I was trying to figure the placement, the rest of the mask broke in half!! AAAAARRGH!! 
I usually only use gum paste for this, but I was running low on it, so I added MMF to it. It sat for almost a week and it appeared to look fine. Obviously not! I don't know why the mixture was wrong, but at this point it doesn't matter. I just made a new mask with MMF and gum tex, just 'cause that's all I have on hand at the moment. I'm afraid it will not be dry when she picks the cake up at 11:00am tomorrow. I've tried calling her, but there is no answer. I'm getting ready to run to Wal-mart to find something else since that is the only store open that I might find something. It's almost 9:30 pm. Any suggestions??? I'm probably not gonna charge her full price on this one, but I still need something to make it look like a helmet. The face mask is quite important to this cake. There are 2 in my photos if you want to take a look.
Any suggestion would be GREATLY appreciated!!!
Hi,
I am getting ready to walk out the door for wal-mart. Any suggestions? Any??
Hi,
I am getting ready to walk out the door for wal-mart. Any suggestions? Any??
OOOH what a shame. Your helmet cakes look awesome. I've had terrible things like this happen to me as well, like the gumpaste wings on a butterfly falling apart. What i'd do is make them non edible, by using MMF wraped around some wire to hold up, and just tell them to remove it before serving and state strongly that the mask is not edible. Another option would be to make it with licorice wraped around wire. I'd use the wire that is used for sugar flowers. Please keep us posted on how you go with this one.
Cheers
Nati
Wal-mart is the only place open. The only other place that sells anything for hobbies or cake decorating is Hobby Lobby and they closed at 9:00pm. So I know I may not be able to use something specifically for a cake to make the mask. So anyone crafty out there that can think of something I could make by tomorrow morning? I'm desperate! I'll chalk this one up to not leaving it until the last minute!!
perhaps you could get some florist wire and mold it into shape and put MMF over it?
Walmart sells some wilton products, I'm sure they'd have gumpaste mix. If you rolled it a little thinner, would it dry in 12 hours?
Don't know if I am too late kiddo but did you see the post I made about adding Fixodent denture powder to fondant, it has to be the powder, got this from a wonderful decorator Sewsweet2.
Just going to copy her post right here in case you are still home.
No excuses....now don't laugh at me. Go to the store and buy "Fixodent" denture adhesive powder. It has to be the powder. I add about a teaspoon of this to a wad of fondant about the size of a baseball. Knead it into the fondant and use like gumpaste. It will get hard for you and you'll have great ribbons. Someone at the RCCA cake show in Omaha, NE, a couple of years ago, told me this hint. They had check it out and it is safe to use. After all, you use the denture adhesive in your mouth. Your gumpaste has the added benefit of being a little minty smelling too.
Maybe you can mold one out of polymer clay or something, just make sure that you wrap the parts that will touch the cake with tape or plastic wrap or something so as not to detract from the finished product. You can take the sculpey (polymer clay) and bake it and it will hold up ok. Just don't want it to touch the cake.
Heehee, did you have to look up the spelling on that one kiddo, haha, just kidding, I love that word!
I know this will work, I hope fast enough for the morning. I think I might add a bit more than called for even just because of time constraints. I am dying to try it because we pay so much here for the gum-tex powder I would normally add.
Anyway, only thing I could think of when the stores available are in short supply.
Hugs Squirrelly
Well, I just want to say thank you for the suggestions. I tried using the wire wrapped with MMF that was mixed with fixodent. It just didn't dry soon enough. I was able to get in touch with her this morning and she didn't need the cake until 3:00, so I ran back out this morning to Hobby Lobby and eventually settled on sculpey modeling clay (chaptlps, thanks for the idea). Although it says it is non-toxic, I wrapped the ends that went into the cake with MMF. I had just finished the cake when I brought it to her. It was a very bumpy road and lo and behold the cake split in the back where the layers met. I touched it up for her, but I was glad to finally get rid of that cake!! It should have been super easy because the only detail work it had was 2 horse shoes and a blue stripe. What a Pain!! 
She was still happy with the cake. She had actually ordered a helmet 3 weeks ago and raved about it. Obviously she's not disappointed because she still wants me to do a Tinkerbell doll cake for her daughter next week. A lesson learned, I guess.
Squirrelly, I saw one of the posts on the fixodent and had actually bought some to try out, but I had forgotten that I had it. I did mix it with the MMF last night, but it just was not enough time to dry. I have a 3D cake to do in 2 weeks that requires pieces to stand up, so I will definitely try it for that one. I'll let ya'll know how it comes out.
Well, at least football season is over and it will give me time to figure out what went wrong!!
Thanks guys! 
Wow, that is very cool, very well done! Boy, you did have your fun with that cake didn't you, you poor thing!
Hugs Squirrelly
Great job! You'd never tell by looking what you went through with this cake!
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