I have to say - I am NOT a big fan of carved cakes. They get all crumby when you carve them and I have had troubles in the past with putting fondant over them. This one, was actually a dream!
I started with a 1/2 sheet of triple chocolate fudge cake, split in in fourths and stacked it (with SMBC in between). I then started angling the front with my bread knife, a little at a time. I think I actually ended up making about 5 cuts before I got the angle right. Once that was done, I crumb coated the whole cake with SMBC and then chilled it in the fridge. While that was happening, I made the pine trees out of sugar cones and green royal icing and let them dry. I also made the wheels, and the trailer hitch out of black fondant and let them all dry as well. The hitch I put in toothpicks on the ends, so that I would be able to attach it to the trailer easily once I was done.
Remember the graduated color cake? Remember how I made A LOT of green fondant. Well, I used that to cover my cake board. Things always happen for a reason. :-)
Once the cake was chilled, I covered the entire thing with white fondant. Once it was smoothed, I used a picture of our new RV and copied it as best as I could with the accent pieces. The graphics were painted on with gel food coloring. Then it was put it all on the cake board. I had some leftover candy rocks from a golfing cake I had done, so I put them in a circle with pretzel sticks - voila! Instant fire.
Rex loved his cake, we love our RV - life is good!
