3D Terminator Cake Tutorial

Do you recognise the movie? It's famous "I'll be back" catch phrase and "nice night for a walk eh" from a very young Bill Paxton with his pink spiky Mohican hair. Who could forget Terminator 1, you know it is 36 years old!! To me it was amazing at the time, how did they get the endoskeleton to walk around that steel works...magic, witchcraft even. 

It still is one of my favourite movies and head and shoulders above all of the other Terminator franchise movies (with the exception of Terminator 2, I love it too). 

So here is my homage to the famous Arnold Schwarzenegger T800 Cybernetic Organism. I made this birthday cake for my son a couple of years ago and it has taken me until now to write up the step by the instructions, he knows much more about the inner working of the T800 than ever I could but here it is at last....

Serves 5-6

Ingredients
1 x 3lbs Yolanda Gampp Ultimate Chocolate Cake
1 x Qty Simple Vanilla Buttercream Recipe
Rainbow Dust Metallic Dark Silver Food paint
400g Dark grey ready to roll icing
50g Black sugarpaste
50g White sugarpaste
10g Red sugarpaste (or a red M&M)
Boiled and cooled water
Small clean brush (new lipstick brush) 
Black food colouring
Flour for sprinkling
Icing sugar for sprinkling

Equipment
Pyrex Ovenproof Glass Bowl (21x11cm)
Sharp serrated knife
Various sculpting tools
Crank handle spatula
10 inch Cake board

Method
Grease and flour the Pyrex ovenproof bowl, allow the cake to cool before turning out the cake it saves burnt fingers and a broken cake! 

Why did I choose Yolanda Glampp's Chocolate cake, well it's simple really, I knew if it was tried and tested by Yolanda then it would be tasty and sturdy, because lets face it I'm going to need a Terminator strength cake to carve out a 3D skull! This cake recipes makes a sturdy  but tasty cake that can be carved without excessive crumbling, chocolate cake can be a bit tricky when you are carving, being either too moist or too dry. 

Allow the cake to cool completely before working on it, it can be baked in advance and frozen until needed. The buttercream can be made up to one week in advance and kept in an airtight container in the fridge - allow to come to room before use. I did an initial outline carving of a skull, then propped up the cake with a cut off for a better angle.

I added more cut offs for the chin and cheeks which I  kept in place with wooden toothpicks....

 

 ....until I glued them on with the buttercream.

Crumbcoat the cake with half of the buttercream, chill in the refrigerator for 10 minutes.

Apply a the remainder of the buttercream using this layer to smooth out skull shape. Do not chill this layer, I find it difficult to get the sugarpaste to adhere to chilled buttercream.

Roll out the black sugarpaste and apply it to the eye sockets, nose cavity, mouth, side of the skull and the erm...forehead indent!

Lightly dust your work surface with icing sugar and roll out the dark grey sugarpaste into a large circle, position the sugarpaste centrally over the cake and gently ease it into place using the heel of your hand. 

Working quickly but gently, press the sugarpaste into place, trim off the excess.

Using a very sharp knife (or a spotlessly clean craft knife) cut out the eye sockets, nose cavity, mouth and the forehead indent! Cut an oval about the size of a egg out of the side of the head, exposing the black sugarpaste underneath, smooth the dark grey sugarpaste edges with you thumb.

To make the eyes, roll out a blueberry sized ball of black sugarpaste and a smaller ball of red sugarpaste (or a red M&M). Brush the bottom of the black with some boiled and cooled water and fix it into the eye socket. Dab the back of the red ball with the water and fix into place.

Using a sharp knife add the details of the Terminator T800

Roll the white sugarpaste into a long sausage, cut off a pea size piece, smooth into a ball and then flatten into teeth shapes, make approx 20 more that this.

Using a tooth pick or a clean tweezers, position the teeth, securing each tooth with a small dab of boiled and cooled water. My terminator has a slight lopsided grin, it suits him I think :)