Hello, 

My daughter has asked for an arcade machine cake for her upcoming birthday in 3 weeks. I've had a search at similar cakes for the basic structure (attached) and am thinking I will need to make the walls out of gum paste? I've never worked with it before so I bought some to try.. I coloured it with Wilton gel colour and then kneaded, rolled and cut out the shape and left it to dry. Once it started to dry it started to crack, I just went to turn it over after 3 days and it cracked completely the way through! Please help.. is gum paste the right thing to use for the walls? Should I paint the colour on after instead? Any tips to stop the gum paste getting so dry (I used the Satin Ice pre made gum paste if that helps..). 

Thanks so much for any feedback!

.

an unconventional approach first and then a normal one — i have used gingerbread cookie dough for stuff like this upon occasion — for an old time record player as well as for large gingerbread houses and a bridge too — it is unusual in that I know of no other decorators that used it for a cake — but it really worked great for me — I have the recipe somewhere and I mean you can sand it too —

with this object of yours I would cheat a little and make it slightly wider at the bottom and smaller at the top — so gravity is on your side —

sounds like maybe your  gp was possibly rolled too thin — although i’ve never used pre-mixed —

but also a more conventional medium is fondant that’s got a lot of cornstarch kneaded into it — fondant has some stretch in it right? and fondant, even a crispy dry hard sheet of fondant has a bit of give to it that gp and pastillage don’t have — yeah they shatter —

hey — new members cannot “reply” to threads for a while — so please start a new discussion/thread to continue the conversation :)

and how tall will this be?

.

.

bump