I was asked to make a cake for a co-worker’s family get-together on the Fourth of July. I was first thinking of a traditional red,white and blue with stars cake, then I was surfing on Cake Central and came upon some cakes that looked like watermelon. A light bulb went off! Watermelon and picnics and ants are pretty synonymous with summertime, so that was my inspiration for this cake.
I first started off by baking 2 12 x 18 sheet cakes and filled them with a seedless raspberry filling.
I made a double dam inside since I knew I was going to be doing some serious cutting and didn’t want my filling to ooze out too much. I stacked the cakes and popped them into the freezer for 30 mins. After chilling, I started shaping the cake to look like a slice.
You can see where my filling and the dam meet. I was lucky enough to not have much oozing since I did trim a lot of cake off the corners.
Lots of cake scraps for the hubby!
I wanted to make a cute cake board so I bought a red and white checkered vinyl tablecloth from Wal-Mart.
Wrapped it around a 16×16 in sq. piece of plywood (compliments of my hubby…he’s cut a lot of plywood for my boards!), and used a staple gun to secure it on the bottom.
After icing the cake and securing it to the cake board with a little royal icing on the bottom, it was time to break out the airbrush. I used pink from the Americolor airbrush set I bought. and sprayed the front and top of the cake, but not the sides, since they were going to be covered with fondant anyway.
I then rolled out some leftover light green fondant ( I save all my extra fondant…you never know when you might need a little green, or purple for a quick flower, etc.) I had no idea of how much fondant I would need, so I used a ribbon to measure around the cake and give me a better estimate of how much to roll out.
After cutting one side straight, I dusted it with cornstarch, and rolled it up bandage style.
This corner gave me a little trouble, the fondant was a little too thin and ripped, so I cut matching strips and put over both of the corners of the cake, so they would look similar.
Before airbrushing the sides, I put a paper towel over the buttercream on top to keep any green coloring from getting on it.
I loaded some more green fondant into my clay extruder and made a ribbon to duplicate the lighter part of the watermelon rind.
I used the bottom of a decorating tip to cut out circles and shape into my seeds.
How to make the ants:
I had again some leftover fondant that I mixed some tylose into so it would be more stable and dry quicker.
Quick little ant anatomy lesson for ya:
http://www.infowest.com/life/antbody.htm
I began by rolling out 4 balls for each ant. 2 larger sized balls for the head and tail, and 2 smaller ones for the abdomen.
I took some 18g floral wire that was already wrapped with white paper
I skewered the body parts, then cut and bent some wire for the legs and antennae.
After assembling the bodies and legs, I set them on a block of styrofoam and gave them a quick spray with the airbrush.
I stuck in the 2 antennae on the head and added some googly eyes and let them dry.
The finished cake:
I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!
Keep on cakin!
Kelly
