Who Cut The Cheese???

Yes, this is another Ratatouille post. Because after all, we all know that mice and rats love cheese! And so do the Parisians, and the movie is set in Paris. So it's only logical that we have a cheese cake in our Ratatouille ensemble!

And by cheese cake I mean a cake that looks like cheese, not an actual cheesecake. I have yet to learn how to make those. Hmm... Maybe that'll be the next learning project on my list*

This cake was made using a normal 9 inch round pan. Then I froze the cake, as is the norm, then after it thawed I cut it in a cheese shape and iced that Swiss-erooni.

Then I covered it up in some cheesy fondant and got this lovely guy:

Up until this step, all cakes tend to be the same, with a few differences, including flavor, filling, shape, and size. The steps are: bake, cool down, freeze, thaw, ice (or ganache), cover with fondant (or apply top layer of buttercream) and voila, you have the first step of the cake and you are ready to decorate, which tends to be the hard part. But our lovely little cheese cake here was nicer to us than that. The hardest part was putting fondant all the way around on such an interestingly shaped cake.

Why was the decoration of this cake so easy you ask? Well, because all i had to do was poke some holes.

That cool little green thing right there is what I call a ball tool. It's very useful to make flowers** and holes. So, I used that little baller to poke my cheese (:

So after enjoying myself far too much***, I had this beautiful block of cheese! For a finalizing touch, I put on a wooden cutting board. Yes, I do know that cheese normally doesn't go on cutting boards, but usually rats don't cook either, so take that =P

And of course, the wooden board was cling wrapped to protect the cake (:

Making cheese cake was by far the easiest part of our Ratatouille ensemble, which made me very happy, since the rest of it was so challenging. Not that I don't love a challenge, but I can only take so many challenges in one cake. Arms falling, mats peeling****, coloring brown fondant, arms falling, eyes, hands, feet, arms falling, tails, handles, veggies, arms falling, et cetera et cetera. So the cheese cake was a nice easy deviation from the difficulties of Remy's life.

So here's the cheese cake on the final piece.

Just a little taste to keep you going (;
So come back later to enjoy the Ratatouille finale!

*Which is pretty long, so don't hold your breath for that post.
**I'll explain later.
***Who would have known that poking a cake is that much fun when there's no chocolate icing?
****You'll find out on the next Ratatouille post (;

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. (;