Christmas Cake Topper

This rather handsome fellow is to adorn an upcoming festive cake and, if my calculations are correct, he should just about fit from one edge to the other of the 6" cake I have planned!

At an amazing 12.5cm tall and about 1lb in weight, he is, by far, the biggest cutie I have ever made I think. At that weight, he can only adorn a super rich fruit cake.

I want to share with you the process I used to make him and hope this will inspire you to make your own.

I used:

• Renshaw's fondant in
  • Red
  • White
  • Skin tone
  • Black
  • Various small amounts of your choice of colours for 'gifts'
• Renshaw's modelling paste in
  • Black
  • Green
• Marshmallows
• Crisped rice breakfast cereal
• A plastic dowel
• Candy red berries
• Edible gold paint
• Edible pearl shimmer paint
• Edible gold lustre dust
• Edible glue / water

He started off as a ball of red fondant rolled into a cone. Into this I inserted a stick of dried spaghetti (as a dowel and because he might be eaten).

Little did I realise that this was not going to be enough to stabilise him as he grew. I would later use a plastic dowel.

• I rolled a long sausage shape and cut it in half.
• Then I measured them against the body, trimmed them and removed them.
• I will later come to realise that they will need further trimming as they were too long.

The Belt

• I rolled a strip of black modelling paste about 1cm thick, and fixed this on for his belt.
• Paint on the gold buckle later

Re-fix the arms on with the belt in place

• Roll a suitably sized, skin tone, ball for the head and fixed it onto the spaghetti dowel.
• Allow to harden slightly before moving on
• Mark the face with some dots in preparation for his eyes and nose, but don't fix or make these right away.

I decided that he needed his fur trim before I did his face as well as his gloves and the trim on those - see next step

Prepare to use a stronger dowel through the body and the head eg cocktail stick or a plastic Bubble Tea straw

• Roll out a small sausage and flatten it with your hand, you don't want these looking too perfect, after all, it's meant to be fur.
• Make indents all along the facing side and down the edges, measure it around the neck, cut it to size and fixed it on with the join at the front.
• Next for a strip up the front. As you can see, I made this too short, but I'm not going to worry because his beard will cover that later.
• Make sure it is thinner at the bottom so it didn't look bulky above the belt.

• For his hands / gloves roll two balls of white
• Roll them slightly sausage shape and flattened them a little.
• Tap the one side, that will fix to his arms, a little flatter where you know it's going to meet the rest of the arm.
• If the arms are too long, as the ones here were, trim them to size.
• Make a thumb by using my cutting tool and gently mould each one, to take the sharp sides away
• Inserted a piece of dried spaghetti into the ends of his arms
• Added some glue and gently push his hands on.
• For the fur trim, follow the same process as previous step and glue this on where the gloves meet the sleeve ends.

• Insert a ball tool into where you placed the marks for his eyes and nose.
• For his nose, roll small ball, then shaped it into a capsule shape, in proportion and fix on the face.
• For his eyes, roll two small balls of black fondant, add a dab of glue into the eye holes and insert them.
  • Push them in to flatten them a little as they looked silly just sticking out.
• For the buttons: Follow the same process as they eyes, for his three buttons down the front of his jacket.

Now for that beard.

I needed to bulk up the area under his chin first, so I made a strip, exactly the same as I did for the fur trim, and fixed it down the side of his face, under his chin and up the other side.

Whilst it was in place, I used my ball tool to add extra indents to fake fluffy beardy hair.

I just rolled lots of tiny balls and stuck them onto his face to make the basic beard shape ensuring that there are no gaps showing the under side.

Once this was complete, I used a small ball tool to impress little dents all around his beard.

Not shown here is, a tiny little love heart I cut and placed under his nose, this will hopefully show through as his mouth.

For the moustache

Roll a small sausage shape and tapered it off to small points on both sides.

Use a blade tool to press in the middle to give the impression of two sides of a moustache and bring it up and over the little love heart.

Also use the blade tool to place lines horizontally across the moustache to give the impression of hair.

Highlights on the eyes:

I noticed I had forgotten to highlight the eyes. So I rolled two of the tiniest little balls of white, glued them on at the top of the eyes off to one side, then flattened them to secure them on.

• Roll a ball of red fondant
• Now shape this into a cone
• Check against head to ensure it's in proportion
• Trim the thick end so that it's flat
• Hold the hat gently in your hand and press a small rolling pin into the end to make an impression so that it sits on the head
• Keep checking that it fits and is in proportion
• Thin out the rim out of the hat, using your thumb and finger, so it's not bulky when fixed on.
• Bend the top of the hat to one side, see picture
• A added another piece of dried spaghetti down through the head to stabilise the hat when it's on.
• Add glue to the indent at the bottom of the hat and ...
• Fix to head
• Use your blade tool to add 'creases' to the bend of the hat if you prefer, but it does look good

• Roll a length of white fondant into a sausage shape.
• Check size / length against the hat / head
• Trim where required.
• Flatten this with the portion of your hand at he base of the thumb
• This will adjust the size of your piece, so measure again and trim is necessary
• Using your medium sized ball tool (I needed to use a bone tool for mine) make impressions over the top and long sides of the piece, leave trimmed ends straight

Fluffy white pompom:

• Roll a ball of white fondant to the size your prefer.
• Using the small ball tool, make impressions all over.

Paint all the white fur parts with a pearl paint, but not the beard and hair.

Then allowed him to dry.

Time to give this half a dude the sack!

He's already super heavy, so I have to keep it light!

I've never actually worked with a marshmallow and crisped rice mix, so there's a first time for everything I guess.

I had no idea and no recipe, but I guessed it should be as easy as rice krispie and chocolate things.

• I microwaved half a dozen marshmallows, gave it a mix
• Mix in the crisped rice until it looks good.
• I needed the sack covered in fondant and to look lumpy and scruffy.
• Having squashed and shaped the krispie ball, allow it to harden.

• Roll out a base in your fondant
• Then rolled out a thin piece for the top (inside the sack) and then rolled out a thick strip.
• I covered the sides of the sack and made sure it was taller than the krispie ball as I wanted an open top sack.
• Using a piece of washed and cleaned fruit bag netting, I made impressions around the sack to make it look, well, like a bumpy old sack!

Make little coloured squares and allow to dry

Cut some thin strips and wrap around the boxes and add a bow

Add to the sack and around the figure these

Mine will be glued at a later date