Ratatouille Cake... The Veggies

My little brother's best friend's 11th birthday is coming up and his mom asked me for a Ratatouille cake. 

For those of you who don't get out much, Ratatouille is a cartoon movie about a little rat (Remy) that cooks delicious food in Paris through this gangly guy that has no clue how to cook. So the general idea for the cake? A rat with lots of ingredients. For some reason, vegetables (ick) and cheeses look really good on a cake. Go figure.

And so the sculpting adventure begins. The veggies on their own are a challenge, but once you throw Remy in there... The game gets a whole lot harder.

I'll start off with the vegetables. The usual ten-year old response to a plate full of good, healthy veggies is "EWWWWWWWWWWWWW!" But hopefully these fondant veggies will get a better reaction from the kids. Although the parents probably won't be too ecstatic about their kids eating pure sugar... Can you imagine a dozen 10 and 11 year old boys hyped up on sugar??? I don't want to be there when it's time to go to bed.

But not many people like the taste of pure fondant, so most likely the kids will avoid the "veggies" and stick to the cake. (Not that chocolate isn't just as effective at giving kids a sugar high)

But enough about little kids and their sugar highs. Let's get on to the green stuff (;
...And by that I mean the veggies.

Peas. Yummy. I remember the good old days of playing soccer at the dinner table with these awful wrinkly greens. But now I'm "too old" to play with my food -_-

So instead I get to put these icky thingys to use in a "grown up" way. And by that, of course, I mean I get to learn all about Punnett Squares with them. Genetics, what a great class. Dominant and recessive genes. All that good stuff.

Anyways, onto the actual fondant goodies. I promise that my peas weren't just little tiny round green balls. I rolled five of these lovely greenies into a long green strand of fondant to get this:

Peas inside pods (:

I used a pizza cutter to cut out long strands of green fondant (very thin). Then I placed the peas on it and rolled it over. I went along it with one of those cool round tools from Wilton to make the edges and I cut it close with the pizza cutter again. Then I used a tooth pick to press the fondant around the individual peas to make the shape show.

I'm putting both the pods and the peas on the cake... I think. I'll decide that when I get to the actual cake. Whatever doesn't make its way onto the cake will go on a Ratatouille cupcake. So no wasted veggies (;

After the peas, I made these goodies.

I just found out that these purple goodies are called "eggplants" today. They don't look like eggs to me... Anywho, I knew they were veggies and they looked good on my cake design in my head, so I made them (:

First, I made dark purple fondant (which took forever, cause dark colors are terrible to make), and I rolled it up into a "eggplant" looking shape. Then I used a little calyx leaf cutter to make the purple veggie's green part. Then I let it rest on a curved bowl to give it the lovely "eggplant" (I will not conform to this idea of 'eggplant,' it just doesn't look like an egg!) shape, like so:

And now we have purple veggies, also known as "eggplants".

You know what they say, a colorful plate is a healthy plate. So we've got our greens, our purples, and now our oranges.

These bunny munchies were surprisingly difficult to make. First I had to roll the orange carrot body out, then push a round hole in the top so I could fit the leaves inside. With a small, but sharp knife (don't underestimate anything because of it's size. Small knives are like small people, awesome ;D), I lightly, repeat lightly, cut little slashes through the carrot to give them a more realistic texture. Then I brought the green fondant back out and rolled it very thin. I cut it into the general size I wanted my stems to be, then i came along with the pizza cutter and cut the big stem into little leaves.

Here's a close-up of the carrot "texture". 

That's all for carrots, doc!*

The next yummy is actually a fruit (even though everyone seems to classify it as a veggie... I dunno why, because obviously a vegetable could never make anything that tastes as good as ketchup). But still, tomatoes are an important food staple. It's used in ketchup and pizza sauce. It's very necessary.

These juicy buggers (which also go great with grilled cheese when they're in soup form) were made by rolling red goops of fondant into round shapes. Of course, I measured out the goops by using a round cutter (: Then once again I used the calyx leaf cutter to create the leaves of the tomatoes, and just a little stub of green for the stems.

Pretty plants (:

Last, but definitely not least (this is actually my favorite), is neither veggie nor fruit. It is.... 

drumroll

CHEESE! I love cheese (: On my sandwiches, on my pizzas, on my Ritz crackers, on my nachos, etc etc. Cheese is just GOOD.

However, fondant cheese tastes just like fondant carrots, and fondant tomatoes, and fondant peas, and fondant anything (unless it's black... I think the black fondant tastes sweeter than the rest.) So this lovely piece of cheese was made by rolling an orangey-yellow piece of fondant into a ball, then squishing it slightly on top onto the table. Then I rolled it with the red fondant (which also tastes different, unless you use the "no taste" red coloring I use ;D). Once I had covered the yellow fondant with the red one, I took my little, sharp knife and I cut a block out.

I think it looks really cool (:

Check in tomorrow to see how I'm making Remy's cooking tools (decoration for the cupcakes)

* That's Bugs Bunny, for those of you that are a bit rusty on your awesome cartoon characters. (;