or

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Sunday, August 22, 2010

The Sims 3

Cakes for The Sims 3 Console Development Team!
(+10 skill points => 365/400) 


Don't worry if you don't "get" it.  These are mostly inside-joke cakes.  The left cake features the "plumb-bob", a prominent entity in the Sims video game franchise.  The cake on the right features what the Sims console developers see when the game encounters an invalid "thumbnail" texture.  I'm a caker by night, but my day-job is that of a UI programmer.  Our current project is the Sims 3 for XBox 360 and PS3 ... and my team has been working incredibly hard to get this game into a box and out to stores.  Here's my way of giving them a little joy, a few laughs, and excessive amounts of calories.

This actually happened a while ago but I seemingly forgot to post this.

Stats:
  • Betty Crocker Golden Vanilla cake mix in 8" rounds
  • 1 iced and filled with IMBC
  • 1 iced and filled with chocolate peanut butter ganache
  • electric blue fondant (Toba Garrett's recipe)
  • Satin Ice marbled green fondant
  • Cake-ball mix plumb-bob
  • fondant error texture painted with food coloring gels mixed with Everclear
I seemed to be pretty camera-trigger-happy with these cakes, so let's take a trip back through the basics!

 Place a square of non-skid material (e.g. shelf-liner) on your work surface so you cake doesn't slide around.

Put a dab of whatever you're icing the cake with in the middle of your cake board to secure your cake to its base.

Notice cakes may be delicate and rip during pan-extraction.  We'll patch this up later.

Ugly filling lines will also be "fixed".

 This is Toba Garrett's "cake spackle" technique.  Cake crumbs + icing = paste.

Use this as your crumb coat.  Fill in any gaps or gaping holes (e.g. replace missing chunk of cake)

Notice cake is now smooth and whole.

Another dab will do ya.

Still not good at smooth IMBC, but whatever ... these cakes are for free.

Let's talk about fondant.  In my opinion, fondant should taste like straight up chewy sugar.  Alter it with any flavorings you want, but I have found that butter and cream don't really add much.  In this case, I added a bit of melted white chocolate.  Satin Ice has a chemically taste that I could pick out anywhere.  Not sure how other manufactured fondants taste, but I'll bet good money that I'll prefer the taste of homemade fondant any day.  Here's a mound of blue stuff.


Americolor Electric Blue, to be exact.

Chocolate + peanut butter = darn good ganache

Makes for a good base under fondant too.

 It's been a while since I've covered a cake with fondant.
No complications to speak of.  Love that blue!

Pause to talk about marbling fondant.  I had never done this before, and probably should have researched it before hand.  I took some homemade fondant (white) and mixed it with some green Satin Ice to make a pastel color.  I mixed that with the straight-up green Satin Ice to marble it.  Note I should not mix.  I should have coiled different colored "snakes" together and only lightly worked them.  What I did blended the colors more than I wanted, but was still good first try.

If you have never played the Sims, the "plumb-bob" denotes what character you are currently controlling.  The plumb-bob is a ... uh ... 12 sided ... diamond shape ... thingie.  I forget the term for this shape, but what I made was actually only half of one, as if it were laying down on length-wise.


This is shaped out of cake ball material.  Cake crumbs + a little icing = rough clay.  After getting the shape I wanted, I stuck this baby in the freezer to firm up.

Covered the plumb-bob, trimmed it, then stuck it on the blue one.


For the texture error, I cut a rectangular piece of fondant and painted rainbow stripes using food coloring gel (Wilton) mixed with Everclear.  Ideally this would have been made of pre-colored fondant strips rolled out together, but it was way too late in the night for fancy.  My co-workers will have to settle for shortcuts.


My cricut cut some clear vinyl in a similar font of what the error looks like.

I filled in the stencil with black-colored IMBC and was not pleased with the results.  My 'm' was very smeared.  After attending the Capital Confectioners' Day of Sharing, I vow to try stenciling again using stiff royal icing instead.


Now to ruin a perfectly fine looking cake.

There.  Now it's funny.



My team seemed to really appreciate the laugh and the cake.  Go, team, go!  We're almost done!

2 comments:

  1. These are SO cute! My husband would love these! He's a big Sims fan!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Haha that's so cool I would love to make one for my birthday!!! I don't really understand the "img:" one though...

    ReplyDelete

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