Skydiving Birthday Cake

It was my little brother's birthday this week and though he is not so little anymore (nineteen) I decided to still gift him with a themed birthday cake.  I love the challenge of trying to capture a persons spirit, personality and interests in a cake; and not just any cake, one that symbolizes a significant milestone.  I ran through all my brothers current interests and even asked him what he would like but he was no real help (as you could imagine).  What did spring to mind was his birthday present to himself-a recent Sky Dive over the beautiful Byron Bay.

See - I really am not creative at all!

Now for past Birthday Cakes that I have posted I have used a sponge cake recipe as it bakes evenly in a large rectangle; perfect for cutting designs out of.  But for this creation I really wanted to enjoy a cake that was a slightly more indulgent so I decided on a delicious chocolate mud cake.

I made the cake during the week and froze it so that I could concentrate on my design.  I know it kinda sounds silly, but I am not that creative, so I spent the rest of the week drawing funny men jumping out of planes and the like.  I finally set on a design.

I love to use my palate knife when putting icing or ganache on my cake.  It helps to make sure that the cake  crumbs don't go through the icing.

I covered my mud cake in dark chocolate ganache and put in the fridge to set.  I tinted my fondant blue to represent the sky and tinted a small amount green for the parachute.  I left some plain to create the clouds.  Once I had tinted the fondants, I rolled the blue fondant and covered the cake.  I also rolled out the white fondant and used cookie cutters to cut the clouds out.  Once the cake was covered with the blue fondant i placed musk sticks where I wanted the parachute to be and placed my rolled parachute that I cut via hand over this to give it a three dimensional effect.  I cheated and used string to join my parachute to my figurine which my mum very kindly purchased for me.  I also cheated by making a target/landing pad by printing it out off and laminating it.


And here it is... the finished product....

The edges got damaged slightly in the transportation.