After watching many cake decorating shows and competitions on the Food Network, I made my first attempt at a 3 dimensional cake.  In August 2009, when I moved my little sister into her first home, I gave her this cake.  I designed the “mice living in a boot” cake based on her favourite childhood toy that was lost years ago in a move.  It was an orange and brown plastic boot that had plastic mice and furniture that you could hide in the toe of the boot.  When she saw the cake, she knew exactly what it was and was just speechless  🙂  See below for details on how I did it.

I screwed a wooden dowel into a thin wooden board for the base.  Then I baked a chocolate sheet cake and cut out the shape of the bottom of a boot using an outline that I printed off the internet.  I placed the cake cut out on the board with the dowel running through the middle of the heel.  I put ganache on the bottom of the cake so that it would stay in place on the wooden board.  Then I cut out smaller pieces of cake and layered them with chocolate ganache on the heel of the boot (through the dowel) until I had the shape and height that I wanted.  I carved the shape of the boot using a bread knife.  Then I covered the entire cake with cooled ganache. I refrigerated the cake while I made the decorations.

I used buttercream icing for the bushes and gum paste (for the first time) for all of the other decorations.  Here is the link for the recipe that I used for gum paste and edible glue.  I made all of the decorations first before applying them to the cake.  I had planned on making a white chocolate dome (coloured orange) to cover the furniture on the toe of the boot but I couldn’t get my white chocolate to mold properly so I abandoned the idea.  Also, I cut the dowel too tall, but I’m really glad I did because it prevented the many layers of syran wrap from crushing any of the decorations.  This was necessary because the cake was too tall for my cake carrier and the cake had to survive a walk to work, a city bus ride to the bus terminal and a 3 hour bus ride before arriving at my sister’s place.