Winter HobbitLand

Update: This cake just keeps going and going!!! Check THIS out.

Today is grand #6’s 7th birthday.  I asked her a couple of weeks ago what she wanted on her cake.  Snowflakes was the answer.

So I started looking at cake photos…snowflake ones but most of them were wedding cakes.  Then I remembered a cake photo I had filed away from a couple of years ago.  I loved it!  It was snow and winter and SNOWFLAKES! A gal who at Cake Central is known as “anxeli” made it, so I sent her a private message and asked if she had any instructions for the cake…really not expecting an answer as the cake was made back in ’09.

But she answered!!  With a link to about 10 pages of photos and directions!  Whoohoo, I hit the jackpot! As I was sketching the cake, another idea hit me…a Hobbit design??! The Hobbit Hole would work perfectly on this particular cake. You know…the round, green door, the round windows…

So I sketched and found pics and sketched some more and read through “anxeli”‘s tutuorials 38 times…more or less…and then thought it would fun to try and sculpt Gandalf, Bilbo and Thorin just for kicks.  Gandalf would be designed similar to a Santa I found a while back and I had NO idea what Bilbo and Thorin would look like.  Until I  remembered the plush toys that just came out.  Sure enough, they were perfect models! The fondant hair was a problem but surely I could come up with something close?

I fringed Bilbo’s hair and was stumped on the dwarf’s locks.  How the heck would I do that long, black hair?  Finally, I decided to  think wig…color it black and grey with a defining widow’s peak!  Just the thing.

Now Bilbo and Thorin won’t be on the birthday cake today.  Grand doesn’t even know what The Hobbit is, much less a wizard  or a dwarf.  And, Gandalf makes a great Santa!?

The lights inside were THE challenge.  I nearly lost my mind engineering that.  I still have wires coming out the back but for the life of me, short of building a special cake board, I couldn’t come up with anything better.  I tried tea lights, but then you have to have holes in the cake board so you can turn each one on. That meant no upstairs light.  So I ditched that idea. Besides, tea light lights are not enough…light.

Well, I could go on with details but won’t bore you with it all, unless you want them privately.

Big Boss came through the kitchen around 9 and said his 4am morning was getting his goat so he was off to bed.  I turned the lights on the cake and he thought that was pretty cool.  Then he asked, “Why do you do this and where do you get this stuff?”  Answer is, I looked at that cake, clicked and saved it 2 years ago and wondered if I could do something that neat.  It’s a challenge.  And I don’t know where I get it…my mind works in strange ways.  I can see a cake just thumbing through a children’s book.

Anyway, the timing is perfect as The Hobbit is premiering worldwide this week in Wellington, Tokyo, New York, London and this makes a good celebration cake.  But best of all, it celebrates the cutest little red head you ever saw coming into our world!!! Happy Birthday Sweetie!!!

And thanks to “anxeli” for the inspiration and the kind help!!!  You are THE best!!!