Tutorial Tuesday - Folded Mens Shirt Cake

To raise awareness for the recent NZ Cake Decorators Guild conference in Whangarei, our local club members made dummy cakes for display in various shops around town. My contribution was this folded mens shirt cake on display in Mullengers Menswear. It boasts 100% edible decorations! 

You may find like me that when it comes to buying gifts or thinking up cake designs, females are always easier to plan for. Sometime I need a little more inspiration for manly ideas. This shirt cake could be used for Graduation - Uniform - Busy Dad - Retail Store - Career Promotion - New Job etc. 

I started out looking at images of folded business shirts (saved me doing any actual folding!) and then sketched what I thought were the important elements to include on my cake. 

I used an 11" square polystyrene dummy that I trimmed to a rectangle shape roughly 11' x 9". If I was covering an actual cake I would bake in a rectangular sheet cake pan. I'd round every single edge (including the base where it joins the board) with a serrated knife to soften the finished look. Lastly cover with truffle filling and rolled fondant.

I mocked up templates for the main features with paper and laid them on the cake to ensure I had the right size and placement. For example I thought the pocket and cuff looked funny when they were parallel so I purposely offset them a little. For the collar I kept lifting and trimming and trying until it  looked right. I used a couple of sterilized needles to mark corners or hold pieces in place. If you do this make sure they are easily identifiable by threading with a bright cotton so they do not end up part of the finished cake!

I traced around my paper templates on rolled fondant with a cutting wheel and stuck them to the cake with a little edible glue. With white gumpaste I doubled over the cuff and collar to give them thickness and authenticity. I used a quilting wheel tool to create 'stitch' detail on the pocket, cuff and as top-stitching across the yoke.

To make the tie I used a stripe technique featured in a you tube video by Gobake here but you are not limited to stripes. The tie can be personalised with any colour, logo or texture for the occasion. 

I sat my tie onto the shirt before the I put the collar in place. I used scrunched up tissue paper to support the gap overnight while the collar was drying. The finishing touches were slightly different size fondant buttons simply pressed out of this silicone mould and a personalised label written with a edible marker pen and adhered with sugar glue inside the collar.

You could go one step further and add text such as "Congratulations" to your cake board  with fondant lettering made with Clickstix now available in various fonts.