Making some cat mini-cakes. Created with sugar flowers, passion fruit curd, vanilla cake, buttercream and molded chocolate cat face.
First I drew up some plans and sketches to get a rough idea of how big I wanted the cake to be. Then I got some supplies. Casting material, sculpting clay, small silicon molds for the cakes, round cookie cutters, white chocolate, sugar flower paste, passion fruit, petal dust, gel food coloring, and plenty of butter, sugar, and eggs.
After sculpting from clay I then made a mold out of silicone.
Since the sugar flowers need some time to dry and would last a while I worked on them next. I used a pre-made sugar flower paste, but eventually I want to try and create a paste that tastes better and dries a little more flexible.
Testing cookie recipes
First I tried a shortbread recipe. The dough worked well in the mold and if I put it in the fridge for a while it released easily. After baking the dough with a higher parentage of butter lost a lot of detail. I added a bit more flour and these cookies ended up looking ok.
Next I tried a Springerle cookie recipe. The first recipe had too much baking soda and the cookies lost their shape after baking. The second version of this recipe worked better, but the shape of the cat head was too thick to cook all the way through.
I ended up using melted chocolate in the mold as this had the most detail.
