How does Salvador Dalí start his day?

With a big bowl of surreal.

I’m sorry, I saw it on the internet and I couldn’t resist.

Ok, back to the cake! This one, called “Meditative Rose,” by Salvador Dalí, is the 8th in my series of Art cakes, each representing both a different art style/era, as well as a different cake medium. Here is my attempt at Surrealism, using gum paste for the rose.

STEP 1: Create Rose
Since this rose was so big, I didn’t use the formal “rose cutter,” which is available at your local crafting store. 🙂 I just cut pieces out of gum paste, softened the edges, and stuck the pieces on.

I used balled up pieces of wax paper in between the petals. Cut out a petal, stick it on, put some wax paper around it while it hardens, repeat.

STEP 2: Paint background.
Using gel food colors mixed with clear vanilla extract- paint away! These colors are very tricky and don’t act like real color, so beware. For example- when brown is mixed with the vanilla, its base color becomes green. And black’s is purple. So- mixing these colors together becomes a little tricky. That’s why my version of this painting is much more vivid than Dalí’s- I had trouble softening the colors, especially the blue, and basically just used the blue straight from the tube. My apologies to Dalí! 🙂

Here are some step-by-step photos of the background painting process:

Comparison of the two paintings side by side. My little food coloring brushes didn’t allow for long strokes, so the background is pretty choppy compared to his:

Here’s a super-zoomed-in pic of the bottom of the painting. Like I’ve said before- it’s impossible to add white. So in this case, to make those highlights on the two people, to make the path on the right, and to make the little village in the distance, I just used a sharp tool and scraped off the color. White fondant underneath: viola!

The rose really jumps off the page! It reminded me of a Harry Potter photo that comes to life! 🙂     Do you like art? Take a peek at the other art cakes I’ve made here, in timeline order:
– Michelangelo’s Pieta, sculpted with modeling chocolate
– Leonardo da Vinci’s Self Portrait, painted with food coloring
– Monet’s Haystack, Nerds candy
– Monet’s Sunset in Venice, royal icing
– Cezanne’s Still Life with Apples, apple peels
– Van Gogh’s Starry Night, buttercream frosting
– Ansel Adams’ Moon and Half Dome, chocolate shavings

Have other art ideas? Leave them in the comments below!