Cake Updates!!

Today, I want to give an update about my cake-making.  This weekend, I made a Twilight cake.  This was mostly for fun/practice.  I used fondant and gumpaste for the first time and it was quite an adventure.  Here's the first picture - finished product with the Twilight books in the background (for those of you not on the Twilight bandwagon) so you can see what I was going for.

This is what I found out:  1.  Despite what I read about it online, fondant is very super easy to work with.  It makes the cakes look soooo smooth and I didn't have to spend so much time smoothing frosting to perfection (or obsessing over cake crumbs that made their way to the outside).  Mind you, I don't really care for how it tastes, but DH doesn't seem to mind.  2.  See those chess pieces?  They are made of gumpaste and it took me forever to make those!  And I'm sure you can tell they're leaning over.  It was sooo difficult to get them to stand upright - I finally stuck a piece of spaghetti all the way through to get it to stay.  I'm not sure if the leaning was due to the fact that I don't know how to work with the gumpaste, or that I didn't have the consistency quite right.  3.  My apple looks a bit like a red pumpkin.  It was much taller and skinnier (like an apple) but gravity took its toll on my gumpaste and it settled.  Again, maybe this is an incorrect consistency thing.  4.  That parrot tulip was the biggest pain in the rear.  The petals were made individually, with a wire stuck inside and dried.  That was the easy part and they looked pretty awesome.  The next step, however, was to tape the wires together to make a flower.  I tried every which way of taping and it just wansn't happening.  The petals were flipping around and definitely not making a flower.  I have NO clue why that is.  Maybe my wires were too small for the tape to hold onto?  I finally resorted to sticking them into the cake as individual petals rather than one flower.  It looks okay but it isn't what I was trying to do.  Here are some other pictures:

I think this was a pretty good first try with new materials.  Coming up the first week in May, I get to make a cake for my sister's birthday - also a Twilight cake, but she doesn't read the books.  She's crazy about the movies so it will be a bit different.  I'll report back with a design update on this at a later time.  Also, at the end of May, I will be making a poker table cake for DH's birthday.  Should be fun!  :)  Happy Monday, readers!