Skiing Family

A lovely women told the story of meeting her husband while they were both ski instructors at a local resort.  Their son is now an instructor at the same resort.  The two men in her life were celebrating birthdays and this is the cake for that event.

Here I am well into making the figures, and again I got so involved, I neglected to take pictures.  I started with the legs, which is a three inch tube of pastillage and indented to make the separation of the pant legs.  I have inserted an 8" skewer for full support.  I left them to dry overnight.  Next is the core of the ski jacket.  Then the sleeves which I support overnight so that they can hold their poles and skis.

Here is the sons figure.  He will be hanging over the edge of the finished cake, therefore, this figure is sitting.  

The cake was two different flavors and stacked high.
One tier was French Vanilla with Raspberry Compote and the other was Coconut with Coconut custard.
The cake was based coated with buttercream and then a wide strip of fondant covered the sides of the cake, giving me a canvas to paint snowy hills and trees.
I started with airbrushing the clouds and hills, then using royal frosting the tress where done with the brushed embroidery technique.  The free standing trees are done on ice-cream cones and the branches are created with a rose tip.
  The top of the cake is finished with a good layer of buttercream and it was covered with dried and broken sugarveil to create snow. The borders are finished off with a shell tip and  covered in the sugarveil snow.