My coworker Nicole referred her friend to me after I did the Diary of the Wimpy Kid cake for her. Nicole’s friend wanted something skateboard themed. I did some looking around at various skateboard cakes online and gave her 3 options to pick from:
1. A regular round cake with a skateboard topper on it made out of gum paste.
2. A round cake with a skateboard scene around the sides and happy birthday written on top, or
3. A cake sculpted to look like a skateboard.

Of course she chose option #3. But it’s a great opportunity to expand my skills, right….

I asked if her son has a skateboard that I could use for the design or a favorite skateboarder to use for the board design (ahem, I mean deck design…..have to use the right skateboard lingo!)

She said that he likes emage boards from Denver. I looked at their deck designs and they were hard!!! Intricate angles and whatnot. They had an orange deck with a black and white boy holding a blue puma balloon…..it was the easiest design to replicate….

I used a white cake Betty Crocker mix with 4 eggs instead of 3, milk instead of water, and an instant pudding mix in a 13×9 pan. I torted the cake and filled with I instant chocolate pudding and covered in homemade chocolate icing….see Kay’s icing recipe…I used chocolate extract and cocoa powder to make it chocolatey!

I cut the cake into a skateboard shape before filling the cake so the filling wouldn’t leak out. A template printed at the right size and shape would’ve saved some swearing and misshapen corners…..next time.

Because she wanted chocolate icing I covered the cake in fondant…if it had been any other flavor where the icing was white, I would’ve just used the icing and put the deck design directly on the icing. Since I couldn’t make brown chocolate icing turn orange to match the emage deck, I just went with the fondant.

Cake about 1/2 done compared to original emage deck

I printed the desk designs at the approximate size I thought they’d look good on the cake. I used the print outs over thetop of rolled out gum paste to cut the shapes….this could also be done with tracing paper. After they were cut and dried over night I hand painted them with air brush colors.

I hand modeled the skateboard trucks from a mixture of gum paste and fondant. I put a 20 gauge wire through them in the hopes it would hold the wheels….didn’t work but I’ll get to that later…. I let these dry over night then airbrushed them silver.

I made wheels from gum paste and fondant. Emage had white and orange wheels that I thought would go with the orange deck. I let these dry overnight before assembling.

I covered the cake in orange fondant.  I used Fondx because I have about 1/2 of the 10lbs bucket left over from the Topsy Turvy Cake class I took.  It’s pretty easy to work with.  I used orange gel color to get the color close to the color on the website…..the print out shown in the pics in this post show a color print out from the emage site.  Keep in mind not all color printers actually print the colors that are sent to them, the color printer I used does not print colors exactly as they appear on screen.  Plus, I ran out of orange color…..Grrrr!

The cake was a good shape that made covering it in fondant easy to do.  I rolled it out to about 1/8″ think (about!) about 17 inches long and 12 inches wide.  I measured the cake (11 inches by 6 inches) plus the height (about 3.5 inches) then roll an extra two inches to have enough to maneuver and smooth with.

I used a black food color marker with a fine tip to draw in the puma and boy shapes, then used water to attach them to the cake surface.

Emage has a scripty, cursive logo on the their deck.  I practiced piping this about 10 times before feeling comfortable piping on the cake.  I piped the string connecting the panther and boy and the emage name using a #2 tip.

The trucks and wheels dried over night but were still a little heavy for the cake.  I added a wooden dowel cut level with the top of the cake under each truck so they wouldn’t sink in the cake.  I tried attaching the wheels to the trucks on the 20 gauge wire that I put in the truck as I molded it.  This failed miserably.  I had made a hole in the wheel the night before and let it dry.  The hole in the wheel was much bigger than the 20 gauge wire so it kind of flopped around on it.  I tried filling in the holes in the wheels with leftover fondant but this was only a few hours before the cake was to be picked up and it didn’t have time to dry.  I tried gluing the wheels to the truck using just water and propped them up using cardboard.  This left dents in the top of the cake and never really dried.  I tried using fondant glue (mix a bit of fondant with a little bit of water to make a paste), this again would not dry fast enough.  Here it was about an hour before the cake was to be picked up and I couldn’t figure out how to get the wheels on.  I called my husband at work in a total panic.  Being a skateboarder in his younger years he suggested I make little washers/nuts and put the wheels around the board since, I guess, when you’re done doing tricks skateboarders take the board apart and clean the wheels.  Perfect!!!  Randy saves the day again!  You can see in the picture of the final cake below that I put washers (little round pieces of fondant painted silver with a hole in the middle) on the ends of the trucks on the 20 gauge wire and placed the wheels around the cake board to look like a disassembled skateboard.

Final cake with original emage deck design

To finish the cake I piped happy birthday karik on the cake board using a #2 tip.  I used lower case scripty/cursive writing to match the Emage logo on the board.