Ratatouille... Cooking Tools

And the Ratatoille posts continue. This cake is going to be a LOT of work. I can already tell... Kind of like the Halloween cake I made back in October. Now that one took me forever, but it was so worth it. I promise I'll share it soon (:

Now Remy is a little chef. And little chefs need lots of ingredients to make their magic happen, but every magician needs magic tools, and so do chefs.

Number one tool is the magic cauldron. Or in Remy's case, pots and pans. These little guys were made  using cutters and the ball tools. I got a nice, thick slab of fondant and I cut it with the small round cutter (LOTS of Crisco in that). I pulled the cutter out with the fondant. Once I had the cutter with the fondant inside away from the rest of the fondant, I came with the smallest ball tool I have (also with LOTS of Crisco, if you don't use Crisco you are going to have a sticky mess on your hands and tools, and that is NOT fun to clean up) and I dug a little hole in the fondant as I pushed the fondant out of the cutter. Once out of the cutter, I pulled the ball tool out of the fondant and I went around the edge with my fingers, widening and smoothing the sides.

I tried several times to make a handle for these pots, but it just ended up hurting the pots (see the two to the left? yea, handles did that -_-). So I'll work on the handles later once they dry.

Next up on the magic tool list is the roll (and I can't think up of a magic equivalent... so yea). This guy was made by getting a small piece of fondant and rolling it out into a log shape. Then I came along with my ever trusty small, but sharp knife and created the little indents you see here:

I just kept rolling the roll as I softly cut into the sides, creating the effect you see there. Then I just thinned the handles by hand.

And of course, every magician needs a magic wand, or in the kitchen world, a handy, dandy, wooden spoon. You can't tell very well from this picture, but the spoon is about the length of my hand.

First, I started off with a plastic straw from McDonald's that I cut down to the size I want my handle to be, and then I pulled out a real wooden spoon for the spoon part of it. I wrapped fondant around the straw to create the handle and then I put then fondant on top of the wooden spoon to impress the wooden spoon shape on the fondant. Then I came around and smoothed it out with my fingers. No moving this guy for another 24 hours, until it's very dry.* Remy is going to be holding it in the final product.

In the meanwhile, there are lots of little spoons to go on the cupcakes. Like so

These guys are teeny tiny. Like my fingernail size. I made these by rolling the fondant into a thin rope, then coming along with the smallest ball tool to make the actual spoon. The super teeny ones were made with a blunt toothpick.

Here are all of those goodies together (:

But of course, tools are not enough for magicians. Every magician needs a wizard's hat, and the chef's hat is... well, a chef's hat.

These were made the same way as the pots and pans, only with a shallower indent. Then I came along with the knife the create the lines, and a very small, thin slip of fondant to create the "roll" of the hat.

Here's another view of the hats. These will be going on the cupcakes and potentially on Remy... maybe. Depends how much space I leave on his little mousey head.

Well that's it for this post. Next will be Remy (and maybe the pots' and pans' handles, if I get around to those). I anticipate a lot of trouble from that cooking rat. He'll take a while to finish, but hopefully I'll have his post up by tomorrow night (he'll need at least 24 hours of drying before I can move him for a picture).

But, in the meantime, I plan on making some purses**, so stay tuned for that. It can come at any time. And by that I mean tonight, or tomorrow, or Thursday... Whenever I finish them and take pictures and write the blog. Just to keep you on your toes (;

* All fondant used for molding needs a lot of gum paste in it. A 2:1 fondant: gum paste ratio.

** Cake purses that is