A Buzz Lightyear cake - tribute to Buzz, the best space ranger ever -Part 1

In the first posting about Buzz I showed you how I made the "skeleton" for Buzz, in the second posting I showed you how I made the body and the whole shebang, now is the time to show you how I made the cake and then you are going to see the whole cake setting ( Buzz and all).
The actuall cake recipes you can check here( the first part) and here( the second part).

Let me tell you before I start, that Christopher Kimball is a genius! It's official! I am raving about his book the Dessert Bible again.
I have read almost every book there is about cakes and I have to tell you this guy is amazing!!! Well, if you are not " follow the directions" kind a gal, look for another book.
I love him turning the kitchen into a science lab! He explains what, when, where, how and why that there is not a possible way of you making it wrong!
I wanted to try his cake recipes, but I didn't got the chance until now, but this time I made even 2 :-)
For the first layer I made his " Master recipe for All-Purpose Yellow cake", for the second layer " Devil's Food cake". Let me tell you- I have never ever made these two before. I have used only my Bulgarian recipes that are completely different from what is used here as layer cakes.
Both cakes turned out to be AMAZING! I made the lemon variation of the yellow cake and I used "Baker's chocolate" ( unsweetened) for the Devil's food.
These were the best, most moist, most fantastic cake layers I've tasted!
For the cream I made chocolate ganache from semi-sweet " Hershey's" chocolate chips and heavy whipping cream. I use slightly different recipe then the popular one.
If anybody is interested, I will post the recipes later.

So, I baked the cake, I froze it and cut the layers and then it was time to make it look like a space ship :-) I have found only one version of Buzz's ship online, but I didn't like it very much so I tried to improvise and follow the pictures I have of Buzz.

Now, don;t think I "got" the cake from the top of my head. I made very nice and detailed sketches of it before I even started to bake. Again, if somebody is interested, I will post them.
So, dark-yellow, yellow-dark...the layers are going up and at that point I began to realize how big is actually going to be :-)
I used home made decorator's icing with lemon flavor.

I have never covered in fondant such a big and "bumpy" cake before. I was a little worried how am I going to do this, because rolling out such a huge piece of fondant in domestic setting is not an easy job. So I huffed and I puffed and ...I rolled it out :-)

Here my beloved husband is taking pictures of me at 12 am ( not very happy about it ;-)). What?? Try baking a cake with two tornadoes running around the house in bright daylight and then tell me I didn't have to bother him! :-)

At this point ( when I covered it completely with the fondant ) I left it overnight in the refrigerator and the next morning I continued working.
Now, whoever tells you a fondant cake is not supposed to be kept in the refrigerator, they don't know what they are talking about. The fondant cakes are not supposed to endure a big temperature change in a short period of time, that's all.

It finally looks a little bit like a ship:

Here is how I made the wings :

The wings are installed:

And the " exhaust pipes" as well:

The buffer around the ship:

Side view:


Back view:
View from the top:

And the back again:

In the next posting you will see how I made the "fine work" and the finished cake.
 
-How to make a Buzz from fondant
 http://www.anniesartbook.com/2008/05/buzz-lightyear-is-born.html
- The finished Buzz figure-
http://www.anniesartbook.com/2008/05/frankenbuzz-is-born-or-how-to-make-buzz.html
- How to make Buzz's ship ( this is the one I think would be most use for for you, because you can see the shape of the layers)
http://www.anniesartbook.com/2008/05/buzz-lightyear-cake-tribute-to-buzz.html
- Decorating Buzz's ship
http://www.anniesartbook.com/2008/05/buzz-lightyear-cake-tribute-to-buzz_23.html
- The cake recipes ( yellow all purpose cake layer)
http://www.anniesartbook.com/2008/06/long-overdue-cake-recipes.html
- The cake recipes 2 ( the Devil's food cake layer)
http://www.anniesartbook.com/2008/06/long-overdue-cake-recipes-part-2.html