WW2 Zero Aircraft Cake

I was asked to do a customised birthday cake for Betsy of Knotty Bicsie. She is a friend of my tatting craft mate Jullie. It was a black forest sponge cake with chocolate cream and I added some Mars bars between the layers. Her hubby is into remote control aircraft and particularly liked the Japanese Zero Aircraft. I did some research online and based on the picture she gave me, I finally got it made.






















But not without heartache and sleepless nights. It was far from my initial concept of the cake. I was supposed to make a stand to alleviate the plane over the cake, using the cake's weight to balance the stand. I tried to use pastillage as I read that it dries bone hard and is much stronger than gumpaste and fondant. I made 3 stands and left them to dry for 3 days before trying them out. However, I do not know if it is because of the humidity here or was it that I had rubbed in shortening. The strength just wasn't there. And this is what happened.


















My heart broke along with them too. That was 2 nights before I had to deliver the cake! So I went back to gumpaste. I applied the Pythagora's theorem (I really did the math okay?) to make an inclination of 45 degrees.


















I did the planes with part gumpaste and part pastillage. The smaller parts done by pastillage dried okay. I tried to make the propellers smaller but after breaking 3 of them, I gave in to the idea of obscenely big propellers. Only 1 plane will get to take flight. Unfortunately, 1 plane did slipped off the support during transportation, despite of bubble wraps. The support gave way. Aarrgh~~!! I let Betsy do the final assembly (placing the plane on the cake) as she needed to take it to her hubby dearest. It was supposed to be a surprise! I cut some candles into shorter lengths to represent the runway lights.























Tell you what, Ed, you are 1 lucky guy!





















Presents from Betsy to Ed. Betsy's blog has the picture of the runway being lit up. Go take a look~
















Here's the picture I mentioned.

So it was after 10 eggs, 3 Old Gold chocolate bars, at least 3 pounds of icing sugar, 7 sleepless nights and panda eyes that this cake got delivered to you. Happy Birthday! And glad to be a part of your celebration!

I would like to experiment with pastillage again as I know what can be achieved with it. Meantime, I will be busy with work and have some Christmas orders to fulfill. So please bear with me for the time being.

Till next time~~ じゃね～～