Gemini Gizmo/Gremlin Cake Part I

I love cakes and really enjoying making them. In fact, I think I won over Jason’s heart in collage with a Wile E. Coyote cake that I made him. He still reminisces about the taste of that cake. So every year when his birthday comes, I try to do something a little special to show him my love.

Here’s one peanut butter cake:

One year it was this giant peanut butter cup:

Last year I made this for my husband’s birthday:

So this year I wanted to do something really awesome. Since we both grew up in the 80’s, I thought I’d create something from our past…the Gremlins. I got started working on Gizmo, the cutest little creation ever.

How I loved Gizmo as a child. His sweet little song and his adorable large eyes! While sculpting him from modeling chocolate, I fell in love with him again. I kept whispering sweet nothings to him while working, and he seemed to come to life rather quickly. Here was the process:

Create modeling chocolate and let it set until you are ready. This is super simple to make, 2 cups chocolate chips (I used white chocolate) heated it slowly to melt and then added 1/3 cup of corn syrup. Cover with plastic wrap and let it set for a few hours.

I then started creating a tin foil base. DO NOT DO THIS! I quickly learned that the rice crispy mix wouldn’t stick to it and ditched it.

I made rice crispy cookies using marshmallow and cereal. With buttered hands, I sculpted a base.

I then started adding the white modeling chocolate. For a cream color, I mixed in some cocoa powder to the modeling chocolate. Here you can see I added the eyes, mouth, and nose.

.

Adding more cocoa powder, I made a dark chocolate modeling clay and added more of Gizmo’s fur. Notice the laptop in the background? I pulled up a picture of Giz, to use as reference throughout this project. I never would have remembered all of the details of his features without looking at an image of him.

Ears were added

The next part was tough for me to figure out. I knew I wanted his fur to look life-like but wasn’t so sure on how to do it. I first started pulling the modeling chocolate apart. That was kind of cool, but would take too long. So I got out my scissors and started cutting while pulling just the top part of the chocolate. It worked well!

I used my scissors everywhere Gizmo’s fur was.

Next I broke out my paint brush, gel food coloring (thanks Cherry City Cake and Candy Supply) and some vodka. Vodka you say? YES! It works great for painting on modeling chocolate because it evaporates and doesn’t leave a wet, drippy mess like water would.

I painted Gizmo’s eyes and added shading and he came to life! I put him away in the refrigerator and headed to bed. Since I was creating this cake during a work week, I didn’t have tons of time to work on it and did the work in stages. Check out Phase II (the sequel!) of this project!