Fishing cake

This cake was for a(nother!) 50th birthday. The person who got this cake did everything possible to make sure it was successful--she sent me pictures of the person and his dog, told me about the dog wearing a life vest...even described what he wore when he went out on the boat. It gave me enough direction to make sure the cake really reflected that part of his life--and probably made a big difference in the final presentation.

I loved all of the little details involved with this topper...I had enough notice to start the pieces early and really take my time. I wanted to keep the dog. Badly. So did Ben.

The cake is chocolate with raspberry buttercream filling covered in vanilla buttercream frosting. The person, dog, and fish are fondant and the boat, bucket and rod are gumpaste. I used modeling chocolate for the man's hair (I will start using this more often--I liked how it worked out!) and the top of the cat tails (cat tails, cat-tails, cattails? Not sure about this). Something that most people don't see right away but I was really happy with: I covered the masonite topper board with blue fondant and then coated it with piping gel to look like water. I wouldn't have tried this if I hadn't had so much time to put this together--I ran a test piece early in the planning and got to see what it would look like after several days.

So here is the topper, followed by some of the individual elements: