Like a Ninja!

Today I went to Google and searched for "ninjas".

It told me that "Ninjas could not be found".

Well played, internet... Well played!

I've recently made my very first Ninja cake. It happened so quickly, there was no time to take progress photos! And once it was finished, I couldn't actually see where I'd put it.

Jokes aside, I really did made a Ninja cake, and of course I got photos of it; and when asked if I would like to make a Ninja cake, I was sent this picture to use for reference:

Without intending to be a plagiarist, I think I did alright copying the cake... I will let you in on a little Ninja secret, though:

I totally cheated with the weapons.

But first, the cake.

It was red all over, with a black city on the bottom tier. Having made cities on cakes before, like this Batman cake, and this TMNT cake, I knew this was going to be the easiest part.

Then, using a method I only first tried a few weeks ago, I got a picture of what I wanted to be made in fondant (in this case, it was Ninjas-in-action), placed it on top of some rolled out fondant, and used a pin (or needle), to perforate around the edge of the picture into the fondant...

It's a bit hard to tell what they're doing without the weapons (I'm thinking the bottom left Ninja looks less like a Ninja and more like a dancing monkey), but the technique generally seems to work.

In between the city being finished, and the Ninja cut outs being attached to the cake, I made some Ninja stars. And I am totally a Ninja star master now!

With a couple of less-awesome ones that I'd made, I poked them (with wire) into the side of the bottom tier, attempting to match the reference picture.

And now for the 'cheating' part. Instead of spending hours colouring and moulding a sword and nunchucks, I found them both in a discount store and bought them. Admittedly, it was the 5th discount store I'd visited, so it may have taken just as long, but I was at least guaranteed that they wouldn't fall apart and crumble when trying to attach them to the cake, being left without a back-up plan... 2 hours and $4 well spent if you ask me.

The Nunchucks stayed as they were, and the sword, though I wanted to just stab the cake all the way through, Husband suggested I cut it in half, so that only a little bit needs to poke into the cake on each side.

I wrapped the inside ends of the sword in glad wrap for hygiene purposes, and stabbed them into each side of the cake... Yeek!

It looked like this from a small distance... 'Small' because I wasn't sure how long the sword would hold for, and I may have panicked.

But once I was confident the sword wasn't going to topple the cake, or fall out, I moved onto attaching the nunchucks, using wires poked into the top of the cake to stabilise them and stop them rolling off.

Next, the Ninjas-in-Action pieces were attached around the top tier...

And then, according to my 11 year old, I had made the most amazing Ninja stars out of fondant. Ben was definitely my 2IC for this cake! But, he told me that these were "perfect"! What a champ being so encouraging when I was starting to stress :)

The stars (which had been sprayed with edible silver paint once they were set) were placed atop the cake, around the nunchucks, cleverly hiding the wires... Like Ninjas!

The cake was now finished!!

Here's how it looked from the back...

And from the front...

Happy birthday Marco! :)