Next up in my attempt at recreating famous works of art with various cake supplies: Monet’s “Sunset in Venice.” Which reminds me- who’s with me for a trip to Venice? The only place I’ve ever had an attempted pickpocketing take place- and it was by an American. I mean, come on. Luckily the bag was twisted around my wrist so the grab only succeeded in nearly dislocating my shoulder. Apparently the thief did not know of my special shoulders that can dislocate at a moment’s notice. If he’d asked, I would have demonstrated how I can play the piano backwards.

In this series so far, I have used buttercream, modeling chocolate, fruit, and candy. In an effort to use as many different types of cake decorating techniques as possible, I now turn to royal icing. (Royal icing is that type of icing that is usually on cut-out cookies. It dries hard and shiny.) Since royal icing dries incredibly fast, I knew that blending was out of the question, so I needed an art technique that was more… dabby. And so it happened that I fell again to Monet, again to Impressionism- but what can I say! It’s a nice era and lends itself to sugar! 🙂

Once the cake was covered in fondant, I separated the royal icing into several small bowls and tinted them various colors. Once a dab of color was painted on, it was dry within 15 seconds, which caused a bit of a conundrum. Not only was the cake itself drying rapidly and with little time for blending, but the icing in the bowls themselves was hardening. One way to help stop this is to keep a wet paper towel across the rim of the bowl- it slows down the drying. But you’ll need to keep moistening the paper towel. 🙂

After that, it’s time to paint! Here are the “in progress” photos:

  And here is the final product, with a nice lovely frame to make it look like a real painting!

I am running out of ideas for techniques! I have a plan for a fondant cake, and that is it. Please leave a note in the comments below if you can think of a different decorating idea. And a different artist. 🙂 I’m missing the 1600s-1700s completely, and can’t even fathom a decorating technique that would allow me to create such realistic figures. HELP!!!