Ratatouille Cake... The Chef: Remy - Part 2

Remember Remy? It's been a while. Remy had a little 'fall out' with his arm, and well... It just took a while to um... remedy the situation. But now that everything's all fixed again, Remy is back and ready for action! (Just don't touch his arm... please?)

Day Two? Eh, not so much. Let's stick to Part Two.
Well, what's a rat without his hands, feet, and tail? Or a chef without his hat (We've gone over this remember? A magician needs a sorcerer's hat and a chef needs a chef's hat) and apron and dish towel? So that's what we worked on during Part 2.

First off, let's see how well Remy did without all that extra back (and head and arm) support.

Yes, I am aware that this is Remy sort of already ready, but I forgot to take a picture before I started. Usually I just take pictures of the final product, so this is all new to me. Please bear with me, I promise I'll get better at this (:

Anyways, Remy is holding up great! He can even hold his wooden spoon!

Hehe. That was written before the 'fall out'. Point is, he could hold the spoon before losing his arm.

Remember how I said that the nose and eyes were hard to make? Yea, well the hands beat those BY FAR! Once again, two pink round cuts of pink fondant*, but this time a little thicker. About a third of an inch high. Then I rolled the round cut into an oval, and came along with my handy, dandy, small, but sharp knife and cut out fingers for this sucker. Then I rounded them into finger shapes using my hands. The thumb wasn't anything special, I just made it shorter**. Sounds simple? Yea. Done easily? NOPE. These hands took forever to make. I tried and retried a good 20 times. Pesky hands... 

Well, to add insult on injury, as I was putting the hands on, one of Remy's arms decided to fall off (uncooperative much?). I fixed this pretty quickly with a small toothpick*** and left him drying a little longer. While Remy was drying his hands, I worked on his feet, which weren't quite as much work as the hands, but still not the easiest part of this cake (I still can't believe I thought the nose and eyes were difficult... Those were kindergarten material compared to hands and feet...).

That was his right arm... The fall out occurred with the left. So neither of Remy's arms were very nice to me... =/

These were made using the same method as the hands, except thinner and the feet have less fingers (...toes) than the hands. I left them drying on that little wavy drying fondant rack while I worked on other stuff so they would have a nice arch.

And of course, it's not a rat if it doesn't have a tail!

The tail is fairly simple to make. Just get a log of pink fondant and roll it in your hands until it looks like a tail and then cut it to the size you want it to be. And of course, make the tip thinner than the part that connects to the rat.

And these little suckers are whiskers! Same technique as the tail, except smaller and in white. Once they dry, they'll be going on Remy's snout.

And these little guys are...

You guessed it! Teeth! It's kind of hard to see, but it's essentially just a small white fondant square with a line cut down the middle.

Now that we have most of the essentials for Remy, let's have a review really quick, Every chef needs a...

...chef's hat! So of course, Remy needs a Remy-sized chef's hat! 

This hat was made in the same fashion as the ones made for the cupcakes, only longer. Remy also has a little collar and towel. The collar is just a very thin strip of white wrapped around his neck, and the towel is a rectangle shaped piece of fondant that got draped over his arm.

The next part, in theory, is fairly simple. All you have to do is glue everything on Remy! Easy right?

Well, you have to be very careful as you do this, or else Remy will fall apart. Poor guy, he's been through enough don't you think? So let's be very careful with him.

First, on go the feet. They were fairly simple to glue on, considering the rest of Remy. All I had to do was measure them in a way that I thought looked good then glued him up. The whiskers, on the other hand, were a pain in the butt. I glued them on, they fell, I glued them on again, and they fell again. After maybe the fifth repetition of this tedious process, I gave up and just stuck the whiskers in his face, creating a small and unnoticeable hole where the whiskers could fit in.

The teeth were pretty difficult as well, but because they're so unnoticeable, I pushed them back a little to make them fit in the hole of his mouth**** 

The hat was very simply glued on, since Remy's head was so nicely flat I didn't have much trouble with it.

Finally, the tail just got glued on veryyy gently. But it kept falling off, so I waited until Remy was completely ready and on the cake before attaching his tail.

And that's Remy in the making!

In the end I just gave him his wooden spoon and put him in between a pot and a slice of cheese.*****

And that's all for this post. Stay tuned to learn all about Remy's pot of stew and his chunk of cheese (;

*With lots of gum paste... catching on yet? (;

** Only Pixar would give a rat thumbs... And Disney of course, we can't forget our favorite mouse, Mickey (:

***Or maybe it was a big toothpick that I cut into small toothpick size

****Which now that I think about it, isn't that where they're supposed to be?

*****I'll teach you how to make those soon (;