Dum, Dum, Da-Dum...

I had a very special cake request this weekend. My lovely friend Heather (who was a camp counselor at Girl Scout Camp with me!) got married!

The lovely couple:

Aren't they adorable? I stole this from Heather's Facebook page, hope she doesn't mind. :)

As they were planning the wedding months ago, she asked me to make the groom's cake. What an honor and a great responsibility to make something so special.

Her new husband likes cars, and Mustangs in particular. Which raises him up a few notches for me seeing as how a '64 1/2 convertible was my dream car for a while. :) I even test-drove a GT when buying a car, but I fell in love with my Honda. But Ryan has an Accord, and he's all good. So she asked me to make a chocolate cake with the Mustang symbol on it.

So this guy:

(Not my picture, got it from here.)

 And of course, I just couldn't leave well enough alone. That's what gets us in to trouble, right? So I was like "What if I make A CAR?!?!" all excited like. And of course she agreed, who wouldn't? Ryan's dream car is apparently Eleanor. Now I haven't seen Gone in 60 Seconds, nor will I probably ever, but I gotta say, this car is hot.

(Again, not my photo. Got it from here.)

But then at that point, I had to figure out a how I was going to make cake look like that. The first practice round didn't go well, but I was already committed to it. I have to admit, I lost a lot of sleep over this cake. Both in the planning and execution phases.

But the end result was pretty good, if I do say so myself. Without further ado:

I even managed to get you a photo from the process! Of course it was just one, but that's better than normal right? The cake started with two really big sheet cakes. They were somewhere around 25x19x~1.5 each. I cut each into two long strips and trimmed off the excess to get the cake slightly larger than my finished product. This is the cakes all stacked and ready to go:

I did a lot of planning, had lots of patterns, tried to study every slope change on the car, but it is really difficult to manage in cake. The cake itself is on a raised platform (which became even more raised about 11:00pm Friday night before the wedding when I figured out my tires wouldn't fit) of foam board cut to size.

Once the cake was shaped, it was covered in ganache, then accents were added in modeling chocolate. These included the panels behind the two doors, the ridges down the body, and the spoiler in back. The spoiler was a lot of fun actually. I was happy with it.
Here's a view of it from the side along with the cake's platform:

And I added a few fun details, like the vanity plate:

And the symbol they'd asked for initially (a last-minute addition Saturday morning). And I'd like to point out that it's all fondant:

Another view:

And I have to admit, it was pretty traumatizing evening for me at the reception. Have you ever been told that your dog or cat was sent to the farm to live and play, only to find out as an adult it died? I live in a world where I drop my cakes off, people oh and ahh about them (excuse the conceit) and then the cakes live long,
happy, safe lives. I don't watch the cakes I spent hours on being cut and eaten.

...But I did this time...

I watched some guy who had no idea what kind of love, sweat, and tears went into this cake CUT THE FRONT END OFF!

There is really no preparing yourself for it. None at all. I might have teared up a bit at this. But then again, people couldn't tell me how good it was unless they did...

Here's my Aunt Linda enjoying her piece:

Linda deserves a medal or something since I decorated at her house. For a woman who likes to clean, she was quite calm about the chocolate all over her dining room table and the pink countertops. Plus the extra trips for more supplies while I made an even bigger mess. And Uncle Jerry too, for trusting me to drive his big, beautiful, new truck all the way to Dallas. :) And of course my Mom for getting supplies and letting me use her awesome mixer at work to bake.

Congratulations Heather and Ryan! Thank you for letting me play such a special part of your special day. I wish you joy, luck, and happiness for you and your new adventure together.