Totoro Cat Bus Cake

This order epitomizes how technology has truly globalized our world today in more ways than one. M, dropped us a mail all the way from Israel, and got us to make her friend who lives in Singapore a really special cake. I've made a few Totoro Themed Cakes and Cupcakes before, but never a Cat Bus, so i was really keen on this project. 

M trawled the net and found a picture of a cat bus coin bank and sent it to us. we were really happy cos it looked perfect for carving. 

Photo that M sent us.

Sculpting objects out of cakes is a nerve wrecking procedure ( i feel their more like surgeries!), which the husband has come to become very apt at. An eye for details is very important to suss out little shapes and angles which make things look the way they are. not to mention  the amount of scraps that cake sculpting produces!

It took many layers of cakes like this....

which  are then carefully carved and ganached (one wrong move and it can destroy the whole "sculpture") into this!

Sometimes, it may not be possible to carve out nitty gritty details of an object out of cake, in which case i usually achieve those details using fondant which is stuck onto the ganache directly  before covering the entire cake with another layer of fondant to achieve a "flushed" look.  no pictures, unfortunately, as we were too engrossed in our cat bus cake that it slipped our minds. and yes, the container beside the cake was the amount of scraps produced from this project. quite a bit isn't it?

tadah! the finished cat bus cake! : )

Cake was red velvet with salted caramel filling.