I'm not sure if this cake is a Hellcat Charger or a Hellcat Challenger. LOL Actually when I made the cake I didn't even know they were two different cars! So all you car fanatics, please forgive me if I don't have the details correct. My Hellcat Cake is probably a mashup of the Charger and the Challenger.
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The first thing I made for this cake were the wheels. I made an embossing tool to resemble the rims, and simply pressed that into black fondant mixed with Tylose Powder (aka CMC and Gum Tex Powder). After the wheel dried, I painted the "rim" area with edible silver luster dust mixed with Everclear grain alcohol. (Note: I use my super cool Creality Ender 3 V2 3D printer to make the embosser and cutters that I used on this cake. It is my favorite cake decorating tool. If you want to read more about it, click HERE.)Next I carved and crumb coated the cake. I printed out several paper templates of the car: side, top, front, rear, and then I used the templates to trim the cake into a car shape. Once the shape looked reasonable, I crumb coated and chilled the cake.
After the cake was chilled, I used a cutter I made with my 3D printer to cutout sections for the wheel wells. I could have used just a circle cutter, but on the car template I used, the wheel wells where more oval shaped. And I use any excuse I find to use my 3D printer.
In hindsight I made a serious mistake on this cake. Typically when I cover a cake in fondant, I crumb coat in ganache instead of buttercream. The ganache dries as a hard shell and keeps the carved cake from drooping and sagging. I decided not to use ganache on this cake because it was cold outside and I thought it would be okay. Mistake! Big Mistake!
But anyway, after the wheel wells, I added some fondant detail that would actually go under the fondant used to cover the cake.
Here is the fondant going on. Just drape it over the cake and smooth into all the nooks and crannies. It was actually easier to cover this odd shaped cake than it was to cover a round cake.
And here is the fondant all smoothed. You can see how the fondant was pushed in around the front grill. I could have added the grills later, but I thought it would look more seamless this way. BUT just look at how the fondant is sweating. This was the first hint of the problems I was going to have with this cake. The fondant was absorbing the moisture from the buttercream below it. This usually doesn't happen with ganache because the white chocolate ganache doesn't have much moisture in it.
I also used the wheel well cutter to cut through the blue fondant and replace it with black. And notice the car is looking lumpier the longer it sits out at room temperature. Sigh. I should have taken the fondant off and coated with ganache, but at this point I still thought it would be okay.
I also had some cutters that I used to cut out the windows and replace the area with black fondant. I thought this would look better than just placing the black fondant on top of the blue. The shape of the front windshield came out a little odd looking. In the end I cut the top of the windshield out a little wider.
Here I started putting on the black accents. I used Choco-Pan Black Modeling Chocolate for this. The modeling chocolate has a firmer texture and doesn't pull out of shape like fondant does. Modeling Chocolate is great for detail work. And notice car is looking lumpier and lumpier. At this point I put the cake in the refrigerator to chill and harden up some.
While the cake was chilling, I started working on the cake drum. I marbled some brown fondant with bits of other colors (yellow, white, black- extra bits I had in my salvage bin). Once the fondant was rolled flat, I used an impression mat to give it a wood-like texture, and then cut the fondant into 1" wide planks using a strip cutter.
The planks were placed on the cake drum. I used a little piping gel to help glue the fondant strips to the board.
Sadly I was so stressed about my lumpy cake that I forgot to take any more pictures. But at this point I was just putting one the finishing touches. On the rear of the car I made a spoiler (which I don't think the car actually has), tail lights, exhaust pipes, and a license plate. I was going to write the birthday boy's name on the license plate, but the fondant was so damp I thought the edible markers might run.
On the front I added some windshield wipers, head lights, and a grill. I dusted the lights and grill with some silver edible powder to give it that shiny look. I also dusted some silver on the windshield to give it more of a glass-like appearance.
So all-in-all this is not the worst cake I've made, but not the best. Someone has requested a Mustang GT cake for mid April. Rest assured, I will crumb coat with ganache. I don't want another lumpy muscle car cake.
