Standing 3D Wine Bottle
Decorating By ittybittybakery Updated 17 May 2014 , 11:48pm by ittybittybakery
I know there have been a lot of wine bottle posts/threads but most are about horizontal/laying down bottles, or bottles not made from cake (made from dried gumpaste and/or RCT). I need to make a standing, to-scale (or close to scale) 3D bottle made out of cake.
I plan to secure a dowel to my cake board which will run through the entire cake. I'm going to bake in sheets an cut out circles with my circle cutter, stack, use cardboard separators every 3 or 4 layers (depending on how thick each cake layer turns out once I cut them level. I'm also planning to make the 'neck' in RCT, covered with icing before covering with fondant.
A few unknowns I need help with:
1) do I need support dowels between the cardboard separators, or will the one vertical dowel provide enough stability. The bottle is intended to be as close to 'scale' as possible-- so it's not going to be very big in diameter, so I'm a little concerned with sticking a bunch of dowels in there and then rendering most of the cake impossible to cut or eat.
2) how do you suggest covering the whole thing? Fondant vs. Modeling chocolate? I read some where that covering it with fondant was hard bc it's such a tall vertical structure and the fondant was hard to wrap around smoothly. So I thought maybe modeling chocolate would be better-- plus I could more easily eliminate the seam. HOWEVER, I"m concerned with the contoured neck of the bottle, and whether or not the modeling chocolate will 'give' and bend enough without cracking. Will it work? Is fondant a better way to go (It'll be a dark colored fondant like black, so it'll likely be hard to work with as it is). I've never actually worked with modeling chocolate, so that's a bit stressful to think about but I think I can do it.
3) I'd like the bottle to look as realisitic as possible, so a shiny surface is a must. Can I get modeling chocolate shiny... I don't have an aribrush (well, I do, but I haven't used it yet and don't want this cake to be my first try with it). Any regular cake decorating materials I can use to get the modeling chocolate shiny? Can I heat it (or will it eventually dry up after the oils raise to the surface), can I paint it in piping gel? I don't want to try to pearl dust it... I know I'll get streaks and brush strokes.
4) if I go with fondant, any tips for what color? I was imagining black but knowing how saturated colors are difficult to work with, should I go lighter and then use gel color to paint it darker (will this accomplish the shiny objective as well?). Or will the gel color painting idea leave me with streaks and visible brush strokes?
Any tips MUCH appreciated!
AI made a 3d wine bottle about a year ago. Mine was much larger than a real one, so I did use supportive dowels between layers. If yours is going to be the real bottle size I would use only central support, just make sure to ganache the whole cake really well. As for covering with fondant or modeling chocolate, go with fondant. Modeling chlt gets stiff on cooled cake very fast, you won't be able to smooth it out. I covered mine with two panels of black fondant, yes, there are seams, as on a real bottle:) Confectionary glaze gives really good shine. If you don't have it, mix hard liquor with corn syrup 1:1 and brush it over. It takes a white to dry, but gives a wet shine and doesn't stay sticky. Good luck with your project!
thank you so much for the feedback. what is confectioners glaze? do you know if that's different from piping gel? also, when you paneled with fondant, did you do it in one piece (wrapped horizontally around the bottle) or two pieces, on in the front one in the back, so you end up with two seams on the sides? Oh, and did the black look realistic? Red wine bottles are so dark I'm inclined to do that but have read about so many people doing dark green and painting it brown to get that dark hue that's not quite black (but frankly it sounds like a lot of work for what I'm guessing comes out practically black anyway).
A
Original message sent by ittybittybakery
thank you so much for the feedback. what is confectioners glaze? do you know if that's different from piping gel?
thanks for the link. Confectioners glaze have a taste? The description makes it sound as if it's not really meant to be eaten? I'll try to figure out how to find your gallery now... sometimes this site is very hard to navigate. You'd think if I click your name it'd be able to find a link to your cakes but that's not included in the profile info it takes you to. arg!
thanks again for all the help!
AYou are very welcome. Glaze doesn't have taste, I've read that it's used to coat pils to make it look nice and shiny. To look for pics it's fine with me to look on my profile. Its not a private forum:D
AI used diluted piping gel (1/2 vodka, 1/2 piping gel) and applied with a very wide paint brush. It took a while to dry but worked fine. Didn't have time to buy anything else.
Also did a test with diluted black gel food coloring, which gave a nice shine too but seemed gross to me to add more food coloring to something already saturated with color (since it was going on top of black fondant).
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