Wonder Woman Cake

“Wonder Woman!” sang loudly to the song!

I LOVE super heroes!  I love watching super heroes and imagining myself being one some day!  I know…I’m weird like that but it’s okay.  You can judge me!! LOL!  I wish I could fly, have an invisible jet, be strong enough to lift cars and throw them across the state! – yes…a superhero! – BUT, without the spandex!!! – or in Wonder Woman’s case…without the TINY top and underwear!!  Hahahahaha!!

My sweet sweet sister in law Kim turned 39 again for the second year!  That’s as old as she’s going to get she said.  I’m heading there next year as are so many of my friends.  We are all rounding the bend, heading over the hill.  But, it’s not scary.  40 is YOUNG!  I remember when my dad turned 40 and everyone dressed like death and got him a GIANT rocking chair six kids could sit in.  I remember thinking he was SO old!  But, man…I feel like I’m just figuring life out!  I’m only half way done and getting to the good part!!

Well, due to my sister in law being AWESOME and totally into vintage fun stuff like Wonder Woman, I had to make her a cool cake!  She even has Wonder Woman converse! – how COOL is that!??  She’s way cooler than me.  I couldn’t pull it off.  Kim is the same person who designed the incredibly gorgeous invitations for the “Up Up & Away” baby shower we did together that made that hot air balloon cake of mine famous…all because of her!  She’s pretty much responsible for a lot of cool things and amazing inspiration that rolls around this blog.

But first, before I could make the cake, I had to get inspired.  There’s a lot out there but I knew I only had one small tier to work on so the design had to fit within one cake.  That makes it a bit trickier.  So, I started looking at graphics.  That’s usually where I start because I’m always more graphically inspired.  Here’s some of the inspiration I found…

This is the one I ended up using (above)!  It was perfect because it had everything on it I needed and would fit a one tier!

I almost used this one (above) because this is very “Kim” to me! – not as traditional Wonder Woman, but I knew she’d love it.  The only problem is I didn’t have any fresh white fondant!! HAHA!  This cake was a very quick, last minute kind of cake and I didn’t have time to make fondant.  But I did have red and blue modeling chocolate which is why I ended up with the top design.

The iconic cartoonized Wonder Woman!  I almost tried hand-painting this graphic on the cake because I saw this AMAZING cake by Bella Cakes and I totally wanted to copy it!!!  I have a projector so I thought I could easily do it…but I’m such a wimp!! – and again, no white fondant!

So, enter the final design and my final version of the cake, complete with a rope (in the back), crown and of course a photoshopped super hero background!!! “WONDER WOMAN!”

She loved how it turned out!!  It was chocolate mudcake with vanilla buttercream.  See my recipes in the top tab above under “Cake Resources”.

Here’s the back, Lasso of Truth I think it’s called!  Made with all modeling chocolate and dry dusted with super gold dust.  I have MORE to say about that in a sec!!  The stars were edible paper I printed then cut out by hand.  I used my scalpel and watched some baseball with my honey while doing it.  It actually didn’t take that long…maybe 30 minutes is all.  I wanted that crispy star shape.  None of my star cutters are really pointed like this, so it was hand cutting for me!  I also printed a red star on my white paper and cut it out for the crown…so that’s edible paper too.  I applied the stars with a tiny dab of piping gel.

You can see the seam in the back (photo above).  I wrapped the cake with modeling chocolate.  I used the template in the graphic above as a guide and cut out the blue, used the wax paper transfer method to wrap it on the cake.  Then I cut out the red using the other side of the template, and attached it to the cake with the WPTM.  Then the gold band covered the seam.  It was cut using the template as my guide which I then WPTM’d on my cake.  Yes, I made that a verb!

Back to the gold…I totally botched it!  Cry cry cry.  I know it doesn’t look that bad, but I had a vision that I wanted this beautiful gold band and logo.  I used modeling chocolate and attached it right on the cake…BEFORE dusting! – dumb dumb dumb.  I literally made this cake while my kids were at school in one day so I was FLYING and didn’t stop and think very much.  So, after I got it on the cake I was like, “AHH! – I need to paint it.”  I couldn’t dry dust it because I knew I’d get gold everywhere.  If I would have…it would have looked like the rope in the back…beautiful, smooth and shiny.  So, I started painting and it just beaded up.  I’ve painted modeling chocolate before, but the cake was a little cold and slightly tacky, so I knew that wasn’t helping.  But it wasn’t until later on when I went to dry dust the rope that I figured out what had happened…I was trying to use vodka instead of lemon extract!  ARGH!

Lemon extract works MUCHO better with luster dusts, especially on modeling chocolate.  You need something with as little water as possible because the chocolate won’t take it.  The cold, tacky cake and the vodka just made a mess.  I should have dusted it beforehand, but if this happens to you, you can still paint it, just make sure to use LEMON EXTRACT…not vodka!  Same thing happened with the crown.  It was beading up and I couldn’t figure it out.  SO Sad.  Lesson learned…and I already had learned that one.  Oh well…she didn’t care!

Here’s an example.  I did this after I realized what I had done.  I want to show you the difference of modeling chocolate painted with dry dusting, vodka mixed or lemon extract mixed.  Sorry the lighting was SO hard due to the sheen!  But you get the idea…

The left “Dry Dusted” one was by far the smoothest and had the best shine.  The middle one had the most streaks and ended up not looking as nice.  The right of course is the lemon extract.  I also dry dusted over each one because whenever I paint, I always do a final dry dust coating to help minimize strokes.  So, I did do that here also.  But dry dusting is awesome with modeling chocolate.  Vodka, not so much!

Here we are outside my house…got to love camera phone photos!

Another photo I thought I’d show you was my set up in the back yard for pictures.  I know a few of you love to see how I photograph things!  It’s funny…and this set up was VERY funny in order to get the chalkboard in there…

I ended up having to erase out that tiny red line at the bottom of almost every picture…so, that was a miss on my part.  Should have had the board just a bit higher!  That’s my piano bench under the cake and our ottoman trays!! LOL!!  But it worked.  I got my chalkboard!

And here’s my son…he wanted me to make sure I show you his cute picture!

I think that’s all I got!  Thanks for looking and now you get to go be a super hero!

“WONDER WOMAN!”

***Here’s a few tools that came in handy on this project***
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