Twilight Cake

I got an email from my friend, Kirsten, asking me if I "had time" to make a cake for a mutual friend with a Twilight theme. Kirsten is Twilight fanatic (don't they have a term for it?), so there was no way I was not doing this cake for her! Anything I can do to help her in her time of need [for more Twilight stuff ] ;)

Well, I have not read all the books, or seen the movies, so I needed some inspiration. After perusing the abundance of examples online, I decided to go with an icon theme. Each of the elements pictured are featured on one of the book covers.

So, for those of you wondering how I pulled it together, I started with the apple. It's made of marzipan, with a clove for the stem. Marzipan has a nice texture to it that makes the apple look realistic (in fact, the birthday girl asked me if it was real). I made the chess pieces a couple days ahead of time, in separate pieces, to give them time to harden up. They were made with fondant, and are reinforced with small wooden dowels so they wouldn't bend over.

When I started covering the top layer with the chessboard, I regretted my decision to do a round cake. Because of the shape, I had to tweak the squares on the sides to make it all fit. It gives it a kind of perspective, though, which I ended up liking. The flower was pretty easy - just white and red fondant pressed together and then rolled out to give it the mottled look.

All in all, I am very happy with the outcome of the cake. It wasn't as involved as some of my cakes have been, and I delivered it, so that made it a stress-free project.

I refused to send Kirsten a picture of the whole cake ahead of time, and teased her with a couple of close-up shots. It was so fun to get her excited about the cake!