I was quite worried about making this cake. Because of my shoulder problems, I've not made very many cakes over the last few months, and certainly none as complicated as a 3D sculpted Unicorn! As the time came nearer and nearer to start work on it, the less I actually wanted to do it! Finally, it was time, I got stuck in, and thoroughly enjoyed myself!
I am so very happy with how well it came out, far better than I dreamed I could achieve!
I decided to use polystyrene to form the head and neck, to reduce the load on the structure, therefore allowing the structure to be less complicated. The body of the Unicorn would provide more than enough cake for the party goers, and more. For the structure itself I used cake frame rods, with cake cards in between to support the polystyrene pieces, as well as to separate them from the edible parts of the cake.
I coated the polystyrene forms with ganache, then cut my chocolate cake to the right general shape for the body, sandwiched with buttercream and trimmed to match the curve of the body. I crumbed the trimmings and mixed them with buttercream and used this mixture to form the Unicorn's back.
Once I was happy with the shape, I coated the whole thing with ganache, and left it to set. Then the fun began! I used partially set ganache to sculpt the Unicorn, incorporating as much muscular detail as I could manage.
At this point it looks like a chestnut horse walking through still water :)
Because my shoulder is still an issue, I enslaved my son to knead and roll out all of my fondant. He also mixed the colour for the pink fondant. Once the whole Unicorn was completely white, I had added the ears, horn and legs (all fondant) and I was reasonably happy with all of the seems, I left the whole thing to set up overnight.
Next morning I tacked the shading (with petal dust), colouring the horn and hooves gold and painting the eyes (with Americolor gel), and adding the tail and mane.
It really didn't start looking right until that mane was added!
The birthday girl was thrilled with her Unicorn for her 18th Birthday. Happy Birthday Aimee!!
