Sniper Cake

This Sniper cake was for mummy Cindy's eldest son. All three of her boys are avid gamers, and their birthday cakes this year were all based on video games: a Growtopia cake for the youngest, an Injustice-themed cake for the middle one, and now, a Sniper cake, based on a character from the game Team Fortress 2, for the eldest!

Team Fortress 2 Blu Sniper Cake

I'm not so good at sculpting people figurines, so I suggested a 2D cake, shaped like the Sniper character. I'm sure mummy Cindy had her doubts on how the cake would turn out when I sent her this rough sketch. (haaaa, yea I'd prob be worried too if I saw this sketch!)

really rough sketch of cake :|

But I'm thankful that she trusted me, cuz she was really happy with how the cake turned out! And it got two thumbs up from the birthday boy! 

crumb coated in lime buttercream

The cake is a more "grown-up" flavour, being a lime cake with a tart lime curd and lime Swiss meringue buttercream filling. I baked the cake in a large sheet pan, and then carved it to the shape of the Sniper. 

chocolate fondant-covered cake

I covered the cake board first, in dark chocolate fondant that I marbled with a lighter brown, and then added a wood-grain impression on it to give it a cooler effect. 

wood grain impression on the cake board

After covering the cake with brown fondant, I spent quite some time cutting the fondant details of the Sniper out. Cutting details out of fondant is very time consuming, especially when it's a large, detailed, 2D design, like this logo cake that I made a few months ago. 

But all the effort is worth it , cuz once all the parts are pieced together, the Sniper came to life! My fave part was making the bullets in his shirt pocket. His face was challenging, cuz like I said, making actual life-like people isn't my forte. But it didn't turn out half bad! I even brushed some black powdered food colouring on his chin to create a 5 o'clock shadow. I'm glad that the character is wearing shades so I didn't have to worry about the eyes! 

Sniper's fingers & gun

The actual gun wasn't that difficult to make. The parts are basically just black fondant snakes of different thicknesses, accented by strips of blue. It would've been so much cooler if we had managed to put a blue LED light into the gun, like the birthday boy's mummy had initially wanted, but we just couldn't find where to buy a single, battery powered, LED bulb! 

pop-up fondant wording

For the birthday message, I wanted it to pop off the cake board instead of lying flat, so after making each of the letters and numbers, I made a row of brown balls and used wires to stand the letters up on them, at a different height than the birthday boy's name. 

Team Fortress 2 backdrop!

To make the cake more special, mummy Cindy requested that I make a background for the cake. This is a first for me! I spent some time looking for a nice game scene from the net to use for the background. Most of the scenes I found were low-resolution screenshots, but I finally found the perfect image - a super cool Hightower panorama made by Reddit TF2 user pandm101! 

I spruced it up by added the Team Fortress 2 logo on it as well. But I didn't just want it to be a flat background either. I know, I always try to complicate things, but it's always for the better! I printed the image out on three, 8R-sized sheets of photo paper, glued them onto some poster paper and then scored the poster paper where the images met, so that i could fold it and have a free-standing backdrop.

cool Blu sniper cake*

I love the overall look of the cake, especially with the super cool Team Fortress 2 game scene backdrop! So happy that the birthday boy and his family loved the cake! Happy 11th Birthday, Daniel! 

Happy 11th Birthday, Daniel!*

*thanks to mummy Cindy for these pics