Mario Bros. Sluggers Cake

An ex-co-worker ordered a Super Mario Brothers Sluggers cake. She sent me a text requesting the cake…..first order completely done by text messaging….months ago her son wanted an Indiana Jones cake. I had visions of sculpting the hat out of cake with a gum paste whip around it. But, as children will do, he changed his mind in this few months. He had seen a Luigi piñata at their neighborhood piñata store. She sent me a text asking if I knew who the Super Mario Bros. were…..she hadn’t worked at ERO very long before I left, so she doesn’t know Randy. I giggled a bit, looked at the 1up Mushroom Randy has tattooed over his heart (everyone needs an extra life!), and responded “of course!”.
Super Mario Bros. just released their Sluggers, baseball themed game for the wii and that’s what he wanted for his birthday.

I made two 3D bats from gum paste. I let them dry, then painted one green and one red….one for Luigi and one for Mario.

B&W pieces are cut outs from paper, the white pieces are the corresponding gum paste cutouts

At this point I didn’t know he had a Luigi piñata…
I googled Mario Bros Sluggers and found a image of Mario with a bat. I downloaded the image and printed Mario about 6.5 inches tall…the height I wanted him to be on the cake. I then created what I call a 2.5D cake decoration. I cut all the different pieces of Mario out of paper…..his right hand, overalls, face, shoes, etc. I used the paper cutouts as templates to cut out the gum paste.

Hand painted Mario parts

I left hand painted the cut outs and left to dry.

The extra 0.5D comes from Mario’s nose, left hand and bat. I modeled these pieces from gum paste, painted, the assembled with the 2D cutouts on the cake.

The finished Mario on the cake.