Ratatouille Cake... The Chef: Remy - Part 1

This... 

Courtesy of PhotoBucket

...is Remy. Say hi to Remy folks, cause this post is dedicated to him.

I have spent the past 2 days attempting to replicate our good friend over here, and while I haven't quite done him justice, I think he turned out pretty well. We all love getting portraits done of ourselves; that's why we spend $20 at Six Flags to get a caricature done, when we could be using those $20 towards a cake from Brunna's Bakery (Shaking my head... Cakes are SO much better tasting than watercolors). Well, portraits are all great and stuff, but sculptures are even better, and that's just what Remy got, for free nonetheless! Lucky guy. And as an added bonus, he gets his sculpture on a cake. That's a double whammy right there guys. Remy is one lucky fellow.

Anyways, onto the actual fondant Remy*.

Fondant takes a while to dry, but especially when it's in large heaps of it. For example:

Courtesy of Photobucket because I'm too lazy to get up and take a picture of my own fondant.

THAT will take a while to dry out (hopefully it doesn't anytime soon cause I still need to use it...). So of course, a little life-sized Remy will take a large amount of time to dry. And by a large amount of time, I mean overnight. So he's going to take me a decent amount of time and effort. Soooo, here we go.

Here's a top view of Remy after Day Uno. He's almost complete, except for the missing hands, feet, tail, mouth and very wobbly arms. And a cutesy collar I plan on adding later on. He also has a hard time keeping his eyes, ears, and nose on. Sooo, he'll look a little better on Day Two.

First off, we need a body for Remy. So with a nice chunk of fondant** I molded a sort of rat shape body for him.

Thank you Sharon Z. for the picture, since I didn't take one of my own

Okay... He has a little belly...

And with a lovely little tool I made fur on him. Now I have absolutely no idea what this tool is called***, so I'm including a picture of it.

There it is (: 

I went all over Remy with this tool. First in straight lines down his back, then in diagonal lines to the right, then to the left. I did this for maybe a minute or two, then I got tired and just went crazy with it. I figured that this technique will work for fur or feathers, but feathers will need to be a bit more organized.

It looks more realistic from a distance, I think.

Now, as you can see, Remy here already has ears (and in the previous picture he has a nose and eyes). I don't have individual pictures of those, but here's the verbal (er... legible?) how-to for it.

Ears: First, a slab of pink fondant and the small round cutter will do. Cut out two round pink slabs (hmm... 2 slabs of pink, two ears... coincidence maybe?). All I did was take the two round circles and slightly pinched them into ear shape, then I came along and glued them to Remy's head (which trust me, took FOREVER, since I couldn't decide on angle or ear size or location or etc etc).

Nose: I bet you think this was easy huh? NOT. That little nose gave me more problems than I thought possible. Making it initially was fairly simple: Pink ball of fondant rolled into nosey shape. The trick? Pin the nose on Remy. It's quite a fun game, you should try it next time you gave 15-20 minutes to waste. It's a popular one at kids parties. Wait... Maybe the popular one is pin the tail on the donkey? Eh, same difference. Remy is just a whole lot tougher. Finally I decided to use the round ball tool to poke a small hole into one end of Remy's nose so I could just fit it onto his snout and then glue it. It took a little remolding once it was on the snout, but that was easily accomplished with some quick finger work.

Eyes: Here's something you should know about fondant: the smaller the piece, the more difficult it is. And these eyes took some work. The thing about eyes is that they can make or break the sculpture/picture/painting/etc. Eyes are the windows to the soul and if Remy's eyes looked like... well, like these:

Courtesy of British Horror Films

...the picture speaks for itself. Remy wouldn't be the cute little mousey he is, now would he? So I had to try my best on these eyes, so Remy wouldn't look like a rat from Goosebumps (I still can't eat Cheez-its because of them... Looooong story). So after 4 or 5 sets of eyes, I decided to go with these:

Not exactly Mickey Mouse, but definitely cuter than Mr. Werewolf's up there. These lookers were made out off itsy bitsy teeny weeny white gumpaste balls and even tinier itsy bitsy teeny weeny black fondant balls. Then using toothpicks (because my fingers are too big to hold onto them), i rolled them into the roundish shapes you see, and I placed the black ones on top of the white ones, then both of them together on Remy. (Remember the little indent on his forehead? That's were the eyeballs fit into)

Yay for rat faces!!!**** That was the total amount of work for Day One of Remy. I left him sitting on the table drying overnight (and oh boy was I praying that someone wouldn't bump him over. My little brother enjoys having imaginary sword fights in the living room, and I've seen many vases fall to his plastic sword's wrath).

*Once again, with lots of gum paste included
**AND GUM PASTE
*** If you do know the official name, please enlighten me
**** Any one else read Island? Awesome series.