Chestnut Horse Cake
This chocolate colored, chocolate fudge cake, torted with a sour cream chic filling, was made for a young horsewoman who loved a buckskin version I had made earlier. I covered it with dark choc ganache and a mixture of MC/LMF. Unfortunately, the head is too large for the body which was constrained by a too short cake board I had made earlier. But she was delighted and didn't mind that I was distressed over proportions.
Wow! Looks awesome!
Very nice!! It looks proportioned to me. What is the head made out of, cake and how did you support it?
Thank you. I carved a basic head shape out of styrofoam, using an electric hot needle from Michael's. The head and approximately 2 - 3 inches of neck were styro in order to reduce the weight. (I used the neck portion as a handle while I worked on the head itself.) Before covering with my modeling chocolate/fondant mixture, I took a pencil and drew a straight line from the poll of the head on a diagonal to the middle of the neck. Using this as a guide, I took the needle tool (it is about 6" in length) and made a hole to accommodate the skewer I used later to secure the head to the baseboard, made of foam core.
During the days I worked on the head, I used the skewer to hold it to a block of styrofoam when I wasn't working on it.
The head is supported by a slightly thicker dowel, sharpened on one end so I could hammer it through the cake and bury the sharpened end into the cake board which was two 1/2" thick pieces of foam core, glued together.
The body of the horse was also supported, midway, by a cardboard cake circle resting on large straws. The head dowel also had to pierce this piece of cardboard, so it was well supported, as by this time, it was rather heavy.
My biggest concern was the fact that, having made the head first, it should have been what determined the size of the body. I had already made the board and the 6 recipes of cake which were frozen and filled beforehand in order to carve. So the body ended up being about 4+ inches shorter than it should have been to be in proportion to the head.
While I stressed about it, the mother, who ordered the cake, was delighted. Artistic sensibilities aside, that is what counted in the end.