blog.josephhall.com
How to Build a 3D Tux Cake
Home Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5 Step 6 Step 7 Step 8 Step 9 Step 10
Step 7: The modelling chocolate
This is the hardest part. Go ahead and roll out some dark modelling chocolate. A lot of it. In fact, probably about 3/4 to 4/5 of it. I hope you have a big table. On the a recent cake competition on Food Network, I saw somebody roll out a mess of fondant onto a huge sheet of plastic. If you have that luxury, go for it. I didn't. You'll want to roll it anywhere from 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch thick. The thicker it is, the more you'll have to use, and the more your guests will have to eat with each slice. The thinner it is, the more likely it'll tear. The goal here is to cover all of Tux's head and most of his body. Don't worry about his chest, we'll use white modelling chocolate for it. If you have the luxury of having latex or vinyl gloves around, use them. It'll help keep fingerprints off of your cake.
Now, when I say this is the hard part, I'm actually referring to the head. In fact, after our first failure with the head, we took a different approach. I went to the crafty-type store and bought a 6-inch styrofoam sphere, and two 6-inch styrofoam rounds, about two inches tall. The sphere was cut in half, stacked atop the rounds, and the stack was wrapped in plastic wrap to make it foodsafe. We used that to model the head, then removed the styrofoam and carefully lowered it onto the real cake while making Darth Vader jokes and humming the Imperial March. Then we molded the seam into the rest of the modelling chocolate.
Now, here's the thing about modelling chocolate: it's just like clay. You can mold it, roll it out into snakes or balls, extrude it with a Playdough play set, the whole bit. The warmer it is, the easier it is to work with. If it gets too hard, just pop it into the microwave for no more than five (5) seconds, and then knead it a little bit. If you nuke it for too long, you'll just have a mess on your hands. If you do the head first, and do it with the styrofoam like we did, you'll get a really good feel for how the modelling chocolate molds into itself. If you use a confectionary tool set, this will be even easier.
Now, that said, modelling chocolate is a lot less forgiving than you'd think. It doesn't expand and contract in and out of itself like rolled fondant does. There's going to be a lot of seams that are going to need to be molded out with the confectionary tools. This isn't easy with cake offering the only structure behind it. Be patient. You may even want to practice with a batch of modelling chocolate before you even start this whole thing. We somehow made it through, and so will you.
Now that you have most of Tux's body covered, go ahead and roll out some white modelling chocolate for the cake. This is much smaller, and you can probably roll it out a large cutting board like we did. This isn't a bad idea, because you'll want to cut it to size before you try to attach it. Go a little thicker with this stuff, because the dark chocolate will show through if the white is too thin, and you'll have some jagged edges to cover up. Once you've cut the white part to the right shape, set the scraps aside. You're going to need those. In fact, go ahead and roll out the eyes with a little of it. If you still have a little corn syrup left over from making the modelling chocolate, you can apply just a little of it with a toothpick to the back of the eyes. That makes it a lot easier to attach to the modelling chocolate, since it doesn't have buttercream on it. Go ahead and roll out some eyeballs with the dark chocolate and attach them the same way.
If it looks like Tux is a little, well, surprised... well, you would be too, without your feet and beak, wouldn't you? And if it looks like I could use a little more hair, well, I blame my dad's side of the family.
