Laser Tag Birthday Cake

My obsession with fondant is becoming a bit unreasonable.  So when my good friend at work, Sue, asked me to make her son a "laser tag" themed birthday cake, my brain was just overflowing with ideas.  A cake with a laser tag gun on it?  No- lame.  How about a cake shaped like a laser tag gun?  Closer... 

I settled on making edible little fondant kids playing laser tag on top of a two tiered birthday cake.  Why the heck not!  I made a fish- how much harder can people be?

Hint- the answer is A LOT.

Each of these guys didn't take all that long to complete- the hard part is waiting for the body parts to harden (heh heh) before you go on to the next step.  Also- dying the fondant took a whole evening in itself.  I'm so glad I did it, though.  I planned out every color I possible could have, so that way as I'm molding my little guys, I don't have to stop and color fondant.  That would have been annoying.  

So here's how they came together (using a lot of water as "glue"):

   - I started with a lollipop stick that I formed one of the legs around.  I left a little hanging out the bottom to stick into the cake.  While you are molding, you can stick this down into some styrofoam so the figure can stand on its own. Make some shoes and stick them to the bottom (I liked to stamp a hole in the shoe going on the lollipop leg before I tried to put it on.

   - Form the body around the top two nubs of the legs.  It should look kind of like a triangle leading up to where you will put the neck. 

   - Add arms to your t-shirt.  If the arm will be sticking straight up in the air, add a toothpick for support.

   - Form cylinders for arms and stick them on.  Add hands... in my case, hands that look like mittens.

   - Make a vest and gun and deck the little guy out!

   - Stick on your neck and form a head.  Add eyes, ears hair and any other accents!

Is this the correct way to build fondant people?  Probably not.  But it got the job done.

So here they are!

And here's the final product...

The top tier was chocolate cake with "cookies and cream" butter cream (I just added ground up cookies.)

The bottom tier was white cake with vanilla butter cream and butterscotch ganache.