Ultimate Fighting Grooms Cake

I make a lot of cakes, and almost every weekend I take my iPad and show my in-laws pictures of the cakes I have made during the past week.  Most of time, my father-in-law looks over them and says "Those are some pretty cakes".  He's the fisherman/hunter type and certainly not into baking, so I don't expect a lot of "oohs" and "ahhs" from him.  But when he saw this cake, he immediately perked up and said "Wow, now that's an awesome cake!  What did you charge for that, $1000?"

Unfortunately, I charged a lot less for it, but I definitely appreciated the sentiment.

Of course, this cake was for a groom and his favorite thing was Ultimate Fighting.  While it was no UFC fight, this cake presented a few challenges.

I started with a square cake and used a paper template to cut it into an octagon.  The cake was covered in blue fondant and then modeling chocolate panels around the sides made things nice and clean.  Chad broke out the Cricut and cut some UFC logos.  But what about the posts.  We sat down and did some brainstorming on that little bit.

We finally decided on extruding the posts from modeling chocolate.  We could skewer through the middle of the post and all the way to the base of the cake.  I used gelatin sheets and an edible black marker to make the fencing and cut slits in the sides of the modeling chocolate.  These slits would hold the edges of the gelatin panels.  We were certainly in untested waters, and luckily for us, it turned out great and held up just fine.

As always, thanks for stopping by!  I appreciate your comments, your readership, and especially your friendship.  Have a great weekend!