VISUAL ART: iPad Cake

Raheem had an art show on Friday and it was all about his iPad art.  I decided to contribute this cake.  And, whew, was it hard.  Roughly three years ago, I made another fondant cake (it was a paid job) and then swore I wouldn’t use fondant ever again.  But I came off hiatus for this cake.

It’s pound cake with a chocolate filling, covered in white fondant.  Then I used silver pearl dust mixed with almond extract to paint the silver edge.  A layer of black fondant created the screen frame.  Then it was another layer of white fondant for the background screen, painting with food gel colors.  Just a note, if you ever do use this technique, the food gel colors take a long time to dry—I didn’t have that kind of time, so I accepted that the painted pieces were going to stay a little tacky/sticky.

Then came time for the apps, which are white fondant cut outs painted with gel food colors.  I used the “out of the box” set up for the apps, plus three more: 1) Create96, who sponsored the art show, 2) The Grove, who hosted the art show and 3) Eye of the Sun God, Raheem’s creative moniker.  Oh, and of course, I used the date of the art show.

Out of the box iPad:

I also did a watercolor prototype the weekend before, to practice painting each element (the original is much more impressive, but scanning watercolor is notoriously hard):

I can see the mistakes, of course.  The fondant cracked, the sizing is off, my fondant smoothing could have been better, the cake is a bit tall…but overall, it was a big hit at the art show, so I’m pretty happy.  Not sure if I’ll attempt another fondant creation, but we’ll see…