Fake Sweets Cake

This tutorial includes the steps to make a full fruit cake out of clay.
Included are steps to make the following:
-Blueberries
-Strawberries
-Biscuit
-Doughnuts
-Cake base
-Jelly

Once these are made they can be combined to make a cake

The following materials are used:
-Natural clay
-Acrylics paint (white, yellow, red, blue)
-Paint brushes
-Baby powder
-Toothpicks
-Straw
-Food colouring
-Tacky glue
-Varnish
-Sponge
-Spare toothbrush
-Clear silicone caulk
-Soft pastels 
-Stamp & Stamp pad (optional)
-White silicone (optional - will not include details)

First roll clay into a ball, then flatten on two sides. 

Poke straw through the center to make doughnut hole.

Create a slope from top surface to hole, smooth with fingers.

End of main shaping.

Take a toothpick, use the middle section to press against the circumference of the doughnuts.
This will leave a line around the doughnut.

Some places bake doughnuts without this middle line, so this step is rather optional depending on personal preference.

Once this step is done, leave the doughnuts to dry for about 24 hours (1 day)

It is difficult to paint on natural clay before it air dries.

When the clay has dried completely (hard to the touch, no longer moist), prepare white + yellow paint.

Mix white and yellow 1:1 to make the color of dough. 
Beware to not use too much water as clay is not waterproof at this stage.
Paint doughnut until the color of clay cannot be seen.

Take a sponge, cut into a small rectangle. 
Wet the middle of the sponge the most, and then wet one end of the sponge just a little (refer to picture)
Scrub the middle of the sponge on a brown soft pastel until the sponge is fully colored and then dry excess water.

The following step would require some practice. The main idea is to give the doughnut a slightly burnt look.
Dab or scrub the sponge on the doughnut, use the ends of sponge to wipe colors immediately after for a blurring effect.

When all paints are dried, apply varnish.

Plain doughnut is finished.

Roll clay into little balls, size and shape depends on how you want your blueberries to look.

Pin one toothpick into each ball.

Use another toothpick to push into the side that's directly opposite to the toothpick, and draw a flower from this center point.
The main interest here is to push clay from the center onto the sides to shape the tip.
This step is a little hard to describe with words, hopefully the pictures will help more.

Once this is done, leave the clay to dry for about 24 hours before painting. 

Prepare blue and red paint 2:1
Mix semi-well to perfectly well, depending on how ripe you want your blueberries to look.
The riper the blueberry, usually the more bluish-purple it will be.

Wait until the paint dries, this should take about 10 minutes.

Next, pour varnish into a mixing plate, and dump baby powder upon it.
DO NOT MIX the baby powder and the varnish.
Dip brush into baby powder and varnish and paint directly on the blueberries.

Flatten a ball of clay evenly.

Use anything circular (here a plastic cookie cutter is used) to cut a circle out of the clay. 

Flatten and smooth the edges of the biscuit  to make it slope downwards. 

Use a toothbrush to create the texture of biscuit.
Smooth and adjust this texture with the harsh side of the sponge.

Wait until the biscuit is completely dried before painting.

When clay is dried, paint the biscuit with yellow + white to make it the color of dough.

Using the same technique as the doughnut, use a sponge to darken the edge of the biscuit. This will give this biscuit a slightly burnt look.

If you find the biscuit too plain, you can paint, draw, stamp, or stick stickers onto the biscuit as decoration.

Apply varnish once all inks and paints are dried.

Roll balls of clay into the shape of a cone, then soften the edges. This should give you the basic shape of a strawberry.

Use toothpicks to poke holes for the location of seeds.

Stick toothpicks into the flat end (where the leaves usually are) of the strawberries

Wait about a day for clay to dry before painting

First, paint the strawberries yellow. Make sure to use a lot of paint to cover all the seed holes as well.

When the yellow paint is dry, paint the tip of the strawberry red with a paint brush. 
Try not to cover the seeds with red paint so that it looks like there are actually seeds in there.

When the red is dry, gradient the rest of the strawberry from red to yellow with a sponge.
This will take several rounds of painting and some practice. 
Don't press too harshly with the sponge as it can easily paint the red into the seeds.

Make sure to paint each layer only when the previous layer is dried, or the colors would mix.

Instead of the yellow base color, you can also use white if it looks better to you.

When all paints are dry, apply varnish on the strawberries to finish.

Prepare a large circle cutter and a rolling pin. Prime both surfaces with baby powder to prevent the clay from sticking to tools.
Line work surface with either baby powder or wax paper, also to prevent sticking.

This part will require more clay that all of the other parts combined.

Part 1
Make a 1cm thick cylinder with the cutter. Shape this into a dome with its convex point at the top. 
Use a toothbrush to texture this harshly, as this will be the sponge cake. Slightly smooth with sponge.
Make sure the edges are textured as well.

Part 2
The cake base can be however tall you want. This tutorial's cake base is about 2.5 cm thick.
Repeat the same steps as above but texture lightly and do not shape into a dome. 

These pieces should take 24 hours to fully dry.

Once dried, color the sponge cake (first part) pale yellow. Make sure the paint covers all the textures.
The cake base can be whatever flavor you want. This cake is chosen to be chocolate, therefore colored brown.
Wait for paint to dry.

Superglue the two pieces together, with the sponge cake on top.

Squeeze some clear silicone caulking into a container and wait 24 hours until cured.
Once cured, use scissors to cut off bits of the silicone.
Collect them so they are ready to be used as jelly.

Now that you have all the components ready, plan how you want the cake to look by arranging the components.

Once you have decided, apply super glue to the bottom of each component and place them on cake.

If you are satisfied with how it looks with just the sponge cake, you can skip the rest of this page.


Mix red food coloring with varnish and tacky glue. This will make a paint that helps secure other components while retaining a translucent color. The mixture this tutorial used is food coloring : varnish : tacky glue -> 3:3:2
Mix very thoroughly

Apply this mixture to the sponge cake as strawberry sauce. If you have white silicone, you can shape it into cream or ice cream, and pour the mixture on top. 

When all paints are dried, apply multiple coats of varnish until satisfied. 

Some paint can be scraped off with hard bristled brushes or toothpicks. You can use these to adjust the sauce. 
Feel free to decorate this anyway you want. The end product should be pretty heavy and can be used as a nice little paper weight. You can also stare at it whenever you're craving sweets and pretend you're eating it... Ever since I started making fake sweets, my sugar consumption went down because it's satisfying just to look =P

I wrapped some deco tape around the cake to make it look more polished. You can also use ribbons and whatnot.