The Oscar Cake

Okay, so let me begin this by saying that I have no professional training when it comes to cake decorating. Well, I don't have professional training in anything to do with baking, really. Although I am currently interning at a small bakery...but that's beside the point. This cake was made from my own trial and error while using photos and videos online as guides. I'm not saying this so you'll be impressed, but just so you understand how intimidating this process was for me at first. I knew I had to conquer it somehow, but there were definitely moments when I was ready to give up and throw it all across the room. If you remember my descriptions in previous posts of sewing those elaborate costumes, you'll know that this isn't a new trend for me. I get an idea in my head of what I want to do, and of course the result is never good enough. But I will say that I was happier with this cake than I have been with any big project I've done before. Which means I must be improving, right?

This is a photo of the cake I used as my main guide:

Really neat, right? I knew from the short description underneath it that it consisted of two cakes squeezed together by cookies, all covered in fondant. And the popcorn balls were made of fondant too. So far it was nothing I hadn't worked with before.


I began by putting together my serving platter, which I admit is probably the piece that looks most like my model photo although it was not the main attraction. Oh well. I painted black a round cardboard tray I found at Joann (since they didn't sell plain black) and glued it to another piece of cardboard I cut out from an old box, then glued on a ribbon I found at the store. I thought about trying different ribbon styles instead, but realized that I would rather spend more creative time on the cake itself than on the display board.

Now for the cake:
I decided to begin with the small decorations, as I knew that they needed a few days to dry before I tossed them onto the finished cake where they might just collapse. First was the popcorn. I looked up this technique, which I found worked rather well. I took a mini flower cookie cutter (from the Wilton flower cutter set) and cut out several of those in my marshmallow fondant. Oh, by the way, marshmallow fondant is SUPER easy to make-- all you have to do is melt some mini marshmallows in the microwave (about 45 seconds) with the teeniest bit of water, then add sifted powdered sugar until it is firm enough to roll out. It will get sticky, so it's best to have your bag of powdered sugar next to you as you roll it out.

Anyway, I rolled out an equal number of mini fondant balls since they would be attached to the flowers later. The flowers needed to be shaped before they dried, so I took my ball tool from my new fondant/gumpaste toolkit (which I was extremely excited about finding on sale at Joann, let me tell you!) and pressed gently inside them so that the petals stuck up, curving around the center. After letting those dry for a few hours, I took a bit of water and attached them to the balls. And lastly, I mixed some cocoa powder with some gold shimmer dust in water and lightly painted the inside of the popcorn to make it look more realistic. I then sprinkled the tops with a bit more gold dust to give it the look of melted butter. They could have been a bit neater, I know...but for my first attempt, I thought they turned out quite well.

I then colored some of the fondant yellow and some black, and cut out some stars and a clapboard that would also be placed on the finished cake.






The following day, after letting those dry, I decided to write on the clapboard with royal icing and then start forming the oscar that I planned to place on top. This was done with modeling chocolate, which I had never actually used before but had heard was easy to mold. And while the chocolate itself was not difficult to shape, I found myself having trouble making the oscar details without it getting a bit messy...especially after trying to spray paint it gold.

Before paint

After paint

As you can see, the edible spray was not fully covering the chocolate, so I decided to improvise by creating a paint with my yellow food paste, powdered sugar, and gold petal dust. While the result looked almost like it was melting, I decided that I liked the color a lot better so I stopped fussing with it.


I then proceeded to make the sugar cookies, which I baked off very quickly. Once they cooled, I experimented with coloring them silver, first with edible spray and finally resolving to cover them in white fondant and painting them with silver petal dust. I then cut out small black fondant circles that I pasted on top of them with water, and called it a day.

The lemon cakes, which you can see in the background, were made from a simple recipe I found online that included a buttercream and raspberry curd filling. I baked off two 6 inch cakes for the bottom tier, and three 4 inch cakes for the top one (one of which I had to slice in half so it wasn't too tall).  I forgot to get individual photos of those, but what I did once they dried was fill them with the raspberry curd and buttercream, then top with more buttercream, and finally cover in white fondant.

 The last step was to cut out long black pieces of fondant for the film reels, which I attached with water and dotted with white royal icing to make spots. I cut out an extra piece which I stuck on the front of the cake, making the film strip look a bit more 3-dimensional.  And the red carpet was another last minute idea-- I just rolled out some red fondant and cut a long strip, which I placed in front of the cake (after some deliberation as to where it should go).


So here it is all together-- my most successful cake to date. :)