How I made My Fondant Elmo Cake Topper

♬♩ Lala La La Lala La La 

Elmo's World! ♫♪

Introducing my Green Chocolate Ganache cake, with fondant accents. And my super awesome, I am so proud of myself, hand modelled Elmo in Fondant!!

.•°°•. ☆ .•°°•. Yay Me!! .•°°• ☆ .•°°•.

Can you  half tell I am a little excited and just a bit proud of this one?

I gotta say straight up, thanks to CakeCentral.com and CakesbyRaewyn for the tips on making the fur look. 

I combined a couple of ideas and Ta da! 

My 3D standing 100% fondant Elmo Topper was created!

This was probably my biggest modelling challenge yet! Recreating a well known figure is a lot of pressure, you know you just have to get the proportions just a little too out of whack and bam your model just looks like a whole lotta wrong! I am not a sculptor and don't expect to get exact replicas, but this Elmo of mine - well yeah, I am not ashamed to say that I am pretty proud of how great he looks! And most importantly my super gorgeous niece knew exactly who he was meant to be! I got loads of fabulous feedback on my social networks too - so yep I am not just loving myself - I am loving Elmo with everyone else!!  ♡

And you know, when you take the time to create something, and it works - you should celebrate! Be proud and give yourself a huge round of applause! That's what I am doing today!

I had a few interesting challenges along the way. (I call them "interesting" rather than entering the negative zone lol) and I gotta say that I will not be using spaghetti as a support medium anytime soon! I am not sure what happened, but I think that either:
a) my Spaghetti was too cheap and thin or 
b) the high humidity and rain that decided to appear created too much moisture causing the spaghetti to absorb it and break very easily.

In the end I rescued Elmo by using some toothpicks (not pictured - as by this time I was a little frazzled and beyond capable of taking photos!) I really would like to have been able to make him 100% edible, but structurally this was not possible with my 100% fondant figure.  
Yes, I am sure spaghetti works for others just fine, just not for this home baker at this time!

Before I upload a million photos (ok slight exaggeration but lets just say cake loads) You can take a moment to look at Raewyns photo tutorial on facebook. I could have sworn I watched a video also but I can not find it anywhere? So anyway check out Raewyns sitting Elmo tutorial, and then come back here! 

Otherwise scroll down a little further for my standing semi photo tutorial. (And check out Raewyn afterwards)

The Making of Fondant Elmo by Cake Decor in Cairns

I used Bakels Red fondant treated with 1 teaspoon of CMC/Tylose per 500grams.

I started With 2 equal sized rolls for the legs

Push and roll to make an ankle

Bend to make "feet"

Use a skewer to insert from the foot, ensure it's long enough to extend through the body and support the head. Think of it as a spinal support.

I found curved manicure scissors gave me a more natural fur.
Just make sure they are brand new and only used for food!

Start making little cuts and sort of grab the fondant a little as you cut and pull away.

Make your scissors open wide and I found cutting vertically gave me a good looking fur.

Start from the bottom and work your way upwards.

Repeat process with other parts. Here I wanted Elmos leg to bend. I inserted spaghetti to give it some support. Trim off excess spaghetti at foot toe.

I find it helps to make different supports while working

The arms were made in a similar way.

Make snips for the fingers, cut out excess bits in between.

Leave to dry while supported.

The next day, Makr an egg shape for Elmo's tummy. Make fur with your scissors. 

Putting the pieces together, I used cmc glue on the tips of the skewers / tooth picks and joins. Carefully stick dried legs and arms into tummy before it dries. You can see I am using squished up alfoil to hold the tummy up.

I missed the head photos. But I made a ball and I cut out the mouth with a craft knife, then used a ball tool to smooth it out and placed black fondant in side - again smoothing it out with a small ball tool. I then did the fur cuts, including fixing bits I may have flattened. 

While his head was still soft,  I cut out some small indents to place white hand rolled balls for eyes, sticking  smaller black balls and flattening for pupils. I used cmc glue.

Finally an orange egg shaped piece of fondant for Elmo's nose! Left to dry in supported position for a few days.

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