Sexy Lips Cake

My friend likes to give me challenges with cakes. She's not into the regular round tiered cakes with sugar figurines. No, she more into the 3D carved cakes with tongue-in-cheek humour. For her 30th birthday a couple years back, she got me to make this toilet paper cake. And now, to celebrate her close gal pal's birthday, she wanted a sexy pair of lips!

Sexy Lips Cake

It was a last minute request and I had a full plate for the week, but I happily obliged. It is my first carved lips cake, after all. The cake is 3 layers of her fave devil's food cake, filled with whipped dark chocolate ganache. 

drawing up a pair of lips

Since I don't have a special lips-shaped baking pan, I drew up a pair of lips on paper, cut it out and used it as a template to carve a half-sheet cake. 

whipped dark chocolate ganache filling

After putting on the top layer, I cut off a shallow section in the middle of the lips where they would normally part and rounded off the edges using a serrated knife. The whole thing was then dirty-iced with Swiss meringue buttercream. It is good to get the buttercream layer as smooth as possible because any lumps and bumps will show through once the cake is covered in fondant. 

carving in the details

buttercream crumb coat

I covered the cake in red fondant, making sure to smooth and "caress" all the curves and indentations to get the lips nice and smooth. To get them to shine, I rubbed a tiny bit of vegetable oil all over the surface. 

pucker up!

shiny pair of luscious, red lips

To finish the cake, I added a message wishing "more craziness & happiness", on a smaller pair of lips! I added fondant heart cut-outs all over the cake board too (cuz I dunno, lips just made me think of hearts and Valentine's day..but then now this looks like a Valentine's Day cake, which it is not!).

kiss me, quick!

I am so happy to hear that the cake was very well-received. My friend's friend loved the cake. To more craziness & happiness!