Creating a (Fondant) Family

This weekend's cake is for Jennifer.  She and Carlos are creating their own family, expecting their first baby on the 4th of July, and they have opted to not find out ahead of time whether it's a boy or a girl.  (I like that.)  Her sister Kim asked me to bake Jen a yellow cake with chocolate frosting (Hershey recipe!), and told me that the shower theme is old-fashioned toys.  Kim came by this morning to pick up the cake on her way to the shower.  Her three little girls, Spencer, 7, and twins Maggie and Jessie, 4, were in the car and very excited to be going to a baby shower!  Kim had provided a printed picture of some old Fisher Price people, the kind that kids in the 1970s and 80s had in their toy boxes (do they still make them?)... My daughter Tricia, when she was very little, loved all her "people" and used to gather all of them up (we had many) and kept them in a basket, which followed us everywhere we went!  Every now and then, the basket would tip and all the inhabitants would spill out all over the place.  Tricia would patiently scoop them back up and deposit them back in the basket, and we'd be on our way.

Anyway, I took out my big block of snow-white fondant and began coloring portions of it with tiny amounts of paste food colorings to get the colors I needed.  I did a pinkish-yellow for the family's heads, a tan for the dog and the cat, yellow for the baby's body and the mom's hair, black for the dog's body and ears, and blue and green for the parents' bodies.  I used a paintbrush to apply color to the cat and add the dad's hair.  I used a toothpick dipped in black food coloring to draw facial features on each figure.  This was one fun cake to put together, and Kim's reaction when she came to pick up the cake proved that the two hours I spent this morning "creating" the fondant family was well worth the effort!

Here's a series of photos of how Jennifer's cake came together:

Inspiration picture...

Taking shape...

Flowers under construction...

Cute little family, hanging out in the corner...

The finished product!  Cute if I do say so myself!!!