Spiderman Cake

I know I blogged previously about not having the time to take anymore baking orders. But with this customer, I just couldn't say no! This friend of mine contacted me back in March (3 months before the cake delivery date!!!) and coaxed me into baking a cake for his son. Despite my best efforts to decline the order, she still managed to pujuk me into baking - she certainly has the art of influencing down to a pat!

Initially she ordered a Spiderman cake and matching cookies. But in the end she agreed to order the cookies from someone else, leaving me responsible for the gigantic responsibility of delivery a birthday cake. She was kind enough to give me specific instructions on how she wanted the cake to look like. Red fondant cake with spiderwebs all around, a full sized spider on top and blue sides with more spiderwebs! (I prefer customers telling me what they want instead of leaving the imagination bit to me - i'm always self conscious that I wouldn't meet customers' expectations!)

The cake is a three-tier white cake with buttercream filling. *drool*

Found the exact picture of the spider via Google. Used a sharp shaping tool to trace the shape on to black fondant.

Next came the arduous task of rolling the fondant into thin strips to make the spiderweb.

I tried making the spiderwebs using royal icing, but I was simply not satisfied with the end result. It wasn't crisp and neat, and I am extremely anal about things like that. Also, I couldn't control the icing to make identical spiderwebs. So, all of the spiderwebs were made from fondant and individually rolled, shaped and "pasted" on the cake.

However, I utilized my artistic skills and used royal icing for the smaller spiderwebs on the blue fondant. The left and the right didn't quite match, but I gave it my best!

Painted spiderwebs.

Ready for pick-up.

After I finished the cake, Aiden came along and asked for the same cake for his birthday! Oh my, rolling fondant for spiderwebs again????

Thanks for the order, Ira. Hope you enjoyed the cake!