Seasons of Love Cake
by Barbara Jo
May 2004
Bride & Groom Figures
Rather than content ourselves with just one happy couple on the top of the cake, we decided to put a "bride and groom" on each tier of the cake. In keeping with our nature and seasons themes, we set about to select an animal appropriate to each season. Once we had come up with caterpillars for the spring layer, frogs for the summer layer, and dragonflies for the autumn layer we ran into a problem - each of the aforementioned animals can be sculpted and put on a cake full scale, which for some reason I thought was really important and Barbara May at least humored me, but we were unable to think of a winter animal which would fit on the cake in full scale. Penguins and polar bear were right out, of course, and though we may have been able to come up with some sort of winter mouse, we still weren't satisfied. Then it hit us - pygmy yeti! What could be more perfect? Due to its small size, the pygmy yeti is even more elusive than its larger, more famous cousins such as the migo, the sasquatsch, Bigfoot, and, of course, the standard yeti. In fact, it has yet to be proved that the curious little critter exists outside of this cake and our imaginations, but, if it does, rest assured that it is the same size as the ones I sculpted for this cake. Many of the wedding guests erroneously assumed that I had created small-scale versions of regular yeti, but that just goes to show you the abysmal state of yeti education in this country. That's education about yeti, not education directed at yeti, by the way, though I imagine that a lot of progress could probably be made in that area as well.
Spring - Caterpillars
We decided on these little green caterpillars because they would stand out nicely on the yellow sugar flower. I always like to have a research photo to work from, so I found a good one with a google image search. These were by far the easiest critters to create. I simply rolled a cylinder of gum paste, and then created the segments with a plastic knife tool from my rolled fondant set. The little spots are made by gently pushing a round decorating tip into the gum paste. I believe I used a #3. A little rolled string of gum paste stuck to the head created the antennae and then the caterpillars were set (arranged in what I hope was a graceful curve) on a large flower former, generously dusted with cornstarch to prevent sticking, to dry. The flower former lifted the front half of the caterpillars off the ground, so when they were set on the cake, they were rearing up the air and twined together. A few dabs of royal icing with a #1 tip created the tiny feet.
Once everything was dry, I painted them with paste food colors, thinned with water. The only tricky part is not to work one area over too much because it dissolves the gum paste. Just paint one quick coat, then set them aside to dry. I also did a little light dusting of chalk pastel once the food coloring dried to give them a more natural look and to make the two caterpillars look slightly different in color and in shade from each other, which I thought would be more realistic.
Summer - Frogs
I made the frog bodies and the legs separately, then glued them together with meringue powder once they had dried. One of the gum paste books we were using for reference actually had a picture of a gum paste frog, though it didn't have directions on how to make it. It did, however, provide me with the tip that bulging eyes could be made by pressing a decorating tip into the gum paste, which worked great! I believe I used a #8 for the eyes and a #5 for what I think are ears, directly behind the eyes. I also used a #16 star tip to make the rough skin texture on the frogs' backs. The mouth and the little lines on the back were done with the knife tool. I had to do all this pretty quickly because gum paste has a very short working time before it dries out and starts to crack.
That pretty much did it for the bodies, so I set to work on the legs. The back legs didn't need any reinforcement, but I had to put little #32 wires into the front legs, so they would be strong enough to hold the frog bodies up off the ground a bit.
Once the frogs were dry and the pieces glued together, I painted them with paste food colors. I thought about making them red, so they'd contrast with their green sugar lily pad, but we decided against that because we though red frogs might look poisonous and went with standard green instead. First I painted the undersides a yellow ochre (again, working from research I found online) and let that dry before painting the tops green. I used a slightly different shade of green for each frog, so they wouldn't look identical. The eyeballs I painted red, then added a black iris once the red was dry. As with the caterpillars, I added a dusting of chalk pastel to soften the bright green of the food coloring and add a bit of shadow and highlight.
Autumn - Dragonflies
Our gum paste book actually did have directions for making a dragonfly, so I just followed those and used their picture as a reference. The bodies were made much the same way as the caterpillars - a cylinder of gum paste segmented with a plastic knife tool. The shape of the body is slightly different from that of the caterpillars, being rounder and fuller at the head and more tapered at the tail, but the idea is the same. The eyes, like the frogs' eyes, were made with a round decorating tip. The first time I made the wings, following the book's instructions, I wasn't happy with them. Their shape wasn't delicate and specific enough because I had flattened them with the rolling pin again after cutting them out. Also, the wire inside the wings made it impossible to get them as flat as I wanted them to be. I trashed the first set of wings and started again. This time I didn't put wires inside and it worked a lot better. I also rolled the gum paste thinner, cut out a specific shape using a pattern I made out of paper, then carefully thinned only the lower edge with a ball tool. Finally happy with the wings, I set everything aside to dry.
Next, I painted delicate veins on both sides of the wings with blue food coloring. I also painted the bodies with blue food coloring, a slightly different shade for each dragonfly, and added darker shading between each segment with black food coloring. Tiny feelers were added with royal icing and a #1 decorating tip, and the eyes were painted with black piping gel to make them glossy.
The wings were glued to the bodies with meringue powder. One fell off when I was positioning them on the cake, but I glued it back on. A light dusting of blue luster dust on the wings gave them that little extra shine. Amazingly, the dragonflies were even sturdy enough for one guest to take one home to keep.
Winter - Pygmy Yeti
The pygmy yeti were by far the most time consuming creatures to make, plus I didn't have any reference to work from, so I had to make it up as I went along. In order to make them stand upright without collapsing under their own weight, I gave the yeti internal wire frameworks, made from #20 white floral wire. I covered this with fondant in the basic shape of a yeti body. I chose fondant instead of gum paste because it has a much longer working time before it dries out than gum paste and I didn't want to have to rush.
The face, hands, and feet are gum paste, colored a nice, rich, yeti-skin brown. I could only do one extremity at a time, then I had to wait for that one to dry before making the next one, so it was quite a drawn out process. At first I had a lot of trouble with the gum paste drying out too quickly (I didn't have the option of using fondant here, because fondant doesn't take fine detail as well as gum paste.), but I discovered that it I kept dipping my plastic sculpting tool in Crisco, it kept the gum paste moist and workable for a longer period of time. I used my own feet as a model (I have surprisingly large feet for someone my size, so they actually made pretty good models for yeti feet.) and I made the toenails and fingernails with #2 and #4 round decorating tips. (Can you tell I really like this new technique I learned?) The feet in particular turned out really well, which is important for such a close relative of Bigfoot, and surprised the heck out of me because I can't draw feet to save my life.
The next step was to give the yeti hair. I toyed with the idea of making the hair out of gum paste, but decided to use royal icing instead. I think I made the right choice. It was another very time-consuming process, but the results were worth it. I drew in each hair individually with a #1 tip and it had to be done in two stages, so that the yeti always had a dry side to lay them down on. I also gave them little royal icing eyebrows and eyeballs.
A dusting of a few grey and blue shades of chalk pastel gave the fur that slightly-dingy-wild-animal look and some pink and ivory chalk pastels on the face, hands, and feet, added highlights and emphasized the toenails and fingernails. I'm not sure how I came to the conclusion that pygmy yeti have red irises, but apparently they do. Those are painted with food coloring.
Originally, I had planned for the yeti to be skipping hand-in-hand, but when I put them together they looked like they were jitterbugging, so I went with that instead. We kept the yeti after the cake cutting to give to the bride and groom when they returned from their honeymoon.
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