Hello all, I am new to decorating cakes and a friend of mine has requested a silver crown cakewith black shadowing for an important party they are having, (that have a lot of faith in me). I want to use modeling chocolate instead of fondant because I believe there are areas that will shape better with the chocolate. My concern is the coloring which I need to be perfect. I'm not sure if airbrush the metallic silver is the route I should go or painting it with I think its call silver lustre. I want it to have a really smooth regal look to it. I also saw on a cake show that they sprayed the chocolate with a layer of cocoa butter then airbrushed it. My question about cocoa butter is can you paint it on to make a smooth texture and how well with it adhere to the chocolate? Any advice I can get on how to make this a shiny silver crown will be greatly appreciated!

do you have the equipment to airbrush and the equipment to spray cocoa butter???

some of the metallic products/dusts/foils are edible and a lot of them are not edible so there's that  too

but the learning curve and equipment needed to spray melted cocoa butter is quite a bit for just a crown

you can do a lot with cocoa butter but painting it on will not be smoothie smooth like fondant

it's a fat and it needs temperature control to perform like that

but it would stick fine

but i'd recommend you using fondant or gum paste

AThank you for your help. I was planning to buy an airbrush machine because I plan in using it for more than just this project.

AHow is the gumpaste as far as flavor and is it easier or harder to work with than fondant?

While gumpaste is technically edible, you probably wouldn't like it and if it's used for decorations, it will be too hard to eat anyway.  Modeling chocolate tastes great and is good for covering cakes, but if you're going to make decorations that need to hold their shape (like a crown) you'll want to mix it about 50/50 with fondant or gumpaste.

I would suggest making the crown with fondant or a modeling chocolate/fondant mix. You can find several really pretty templates here on CC.  After it dries and holds it shape well, paint it with luster dust mixed with a clear alcohol like vodka or rum. All you need is a paintbrush.

I recently read on a chocolate making forum that you can spray cocoa butter through an airbrush, but you have to heat the airbrush up, too. They used a heat gun, but said a blow drier would work too, but take longer. I also wonder if anyone burned their hand trying it! I used a heat gun to soften vinyl tile to cut it on the diagonal, for the floor of my bakery, and I accidently touched my ankle to the tip if it, and my skin sizzled and bubbled immediately!