Running Sneaker Shoe Cake

One of my favorite cakes.  I have wanted to make a shoe cake for a while and jumped at the opportunity to create this one for a friend.  The shoe measures at about 11" L x 5" H x 4.5" W and is carved entirely out of cake and covered in MMF.  It's modeled after the New Balance MR817 men's running shoe.

I baked the cake in a 10x10 square pan, cut it in half and stacked it to create a rectangular block to carve the shoe out of.  With the shoes footprint, I used it as a template to carve out the sides of the cake and eyeballed the rest of it.

Covered it over in vanilla buttercream and let it rest overnight at room temperature to set and crust nicely.

I was so nervous with starting on the details and must have spent at least an hour trying to figure out how to piece everything together and where to start.  In the meantime, I put the cake in the fridge for an hour to firm up making it easier to decorate over with the MMF.

Tip:  I find it easier to decorate a cold cake.  You don't have to keep it in the fridge overnight, only an hour is needed to harden the BC (I use a 50/50 mix of Hi Ratio Shortening and Butter - recipe can be found here by Edna at Design Me a Cake).  I then used pieces of parchment paper lightly pressed over each individual section to sketch the shape I needed over it, put the cake back into the fridge to stay chilled, prepped the MMF to the size I sketched onto the parchment paper, removed the cake from the fridge and lay the MMF piece over it to double check the fit, removed the MMF if needed to trim it some more (as long as the BC is cold hard, no dents or smudges will be left behind), then once you have the perfectly sized piece, place and smooth the MMF into place.  Repeat a couple dozen times =)

Once I got the first couple of pieces on there,  the shoe took shape and everything else came together slowly and perfectly.

Total time spent on carving and decorating it...12 hours (not counting the baking, making the MMF, and covering the board) but well worth every minute of it!

For the fabric/mesh print on the shoe, I used a piece of a plastic/silicone drawer liner that had the perfect pattern on it as an impression mat - thank goodness!  I spent a couple days trying to figure out how I was going to recreate the mesh pattern.  I used the same mesh pattern on the name, "Bino!".  The entire shoe is put together using 4 colors of MMF:  White, light grey, dark grey, and orange.  The light grey panels were dusted in white pearl dust to look shiny and "reflective".  The stitches were made with a sewing stitching wheel.  I also used the stitching wheel along the "50th".  A piece of tulle was used to make the fabric print on the orange part along the inside of the shoe.  For the shoe laces, I used a veining tool to score the various thread marks on it - I love bringing out all those little details =)

The cake board was covered to look like a track field floor.  I used a dish cloth as an impression mat against the board to create the little bumps that you find on a track floor.  I was going to dust it over with some brown petal dust to add some scuff marks but it looked a bit more like dirt and opted to not do it - although you can see my sample patch in the photo above).

I just wanted to slip my foot into it and go for a run.  Can't wait to tackle another sneaker cake again - I really enjoyed creating this one!