Last week I had to make 2 cakes for some great friends.  A nightmare before Christmas inspired Halloween cake and a goodbye cake for my friends Tami and Beth.

For the Halloween cake, I really wanted to take my time and make jack perfect.  It was my first time using gum paste, and I wanted to make a figure of jack standing on top of the cake.  In my original concept, I had planned a cereal treat curled hill for him to stand on.  Unfortunately, time was against me and the hill was put on the back burner for another time.

I worked with two different thicknesses of wire and created a skeleton structure for jack.  I did this while watching the movie so I could make sure to get the proportion and movement of jack.  I then used gumpaste to create jack.

As you can tell, Jack was then painted using Wilton’s food coloring.  And yes, those are kitty food cans holding jack in place.  I really need to get some proper foam to hold my figures I suppose.

The face was the most important part.  I had to make sure that it looked like Jack.  With Jack it has to be just perfect because one wrong detail will throw off the whole thing.

I added the spikes around his collar with wire and gum paste.  Had to make sure I got all the tell-tale signs of jack.   Coat, long legs and arms, stitches, tailcoats, and his crazy neck wear.

Finally, I created the cakes for Jack to sit on.  A pumpkin shaped cake with a stitched up mouth and a purple cake.  The purple cake featured hand painted bats and a black ribbon.

Jack was added on top of the cakes.

Look how messy I am. haha.

The pumpkin cake was covered with orange fondant.  I then hand painted on shadows with heavy brushstrokes of food color.

At the party, Jack slowly decided to sink into the cake.  Luckily, it was really dark in there and you couldn’t tell much.  I also brought along a mini strobe light to light him up, and it served well as a prop.

Just in case you were wondering, Jack was edible.  Just watch out for the wires. Haha!