badum!

Check it out. Today, I made a practice humming bird. I spent the rest of the week making fondant and cakes and such - so today was just an assembly.

I started with the wings, a layer of fondant over the wire frame, and then many many feathers of various sizes to cover the top and bottom.

I recently purchased a Roul'Pat mat, and am loving it. It took a while to find the largest size possible at the cheapest price (some places sell it for 60 bucks!) - this mat combined with the rolling pin I use = no stick fondant! faboo fer sure.
The feathers were cut out again using my trusty leaf-shaped fondant cutters.

I didn't really want to do more than one wing, once I knew I could do it, but I needed to make both so that the wing apparatus would be balanced. This was very important, considering that the weight of the wings ended up being, I'm guessing, a little over two pounds.

Next was rather easy - I had shaved down the shape of the pound cake and the rice crispy head, and then attached the head with a dowel through it and the body.
I'd never lain fondant on a cake without butter cream, but now I totally understand why it's done - it really does give the fondant something to stick to - otherwise it ends up like a sort of lose sack over the cake, which is what happened with the bird's body.


I am hoping in the end for the bird to "fly" by resting atop these three upturned glasses - I balanced this and worried about it staying long enough to take photos - so I really need to figure out some sort of support for the whole cake, as well as the wings, since they are so very weighty. I'm thinking that the tail will be a part of this support, but haven't figured it out yet.

I also have some fabulous ideas for flowers, and know what I'm going to do with the sugar shapes I made earlier this week.

I need a blowtorch.