For dad's birthday this year I thought I would make him a cake of the leg lamp from A Christmas Story. It's one of his favourite movies so I thought I'd give it a try. I've never attempted a cake like this so here was my go at it.

For this cake you will need the following :

parchment paper
red, yellow, black and brown gel food colouring
chocolate chips
fondant (I used premade)
coconut
rice krispy squares (also premade)
icing
two 16x24 cakes

Step 1:

I cut out a piece of parchment paper the size of my pan to draw the leg lamp shape and use as a guide for myself. I used about 12 premade rice krispy squares to mold and shape over my drawing to make sure I kept with proper proportions. My fear was that I would make one part too big or too long and then run out of space for the rest of the leg but as long and you place your sculpture over your reprence every so often you shouldn't run into this problem.

Once I was happy with my leg I covered it in a thin coat of cream cheese icing and put it in the fridge to set up.

Step 2:

I just bought white fondant and decided to dye it myself since I wasn't going to need very much of each colour. I used red and yellow food colouring mixed with the white fondant to create a flesh tone, I made a ball about the size of a tennis ball. I added black to just a tiny bit to get the shoe. Yellow in a ball about the same size as the leg. Last, I made several brown colours, all different to slightly miz together to give a wood grain effect for the "wooden crate" the lamp comes in.

The other thing I coloured was my coconut, I used it to mimic the straw that comes in the crate as packing material. I mixed yellow and brown food colouring in a bowl with some water and mixed it all around in the coconut. I then put it on a baking sheet and put it in the oven at the lowest setting and let it dry out. I think I left mine in for about 20 minutes and kept checking on it and stiring. It make take more or less time depending on how much water you used but our end goal is just to have the coconut dry again.

Step 3:

Now that the icing on the leg is nice and firm I rolled out my flesh coloured fondant and put it on. I then used melted chocolate chips and piped on the fishnet stockings, starting in one direction and then the other. i did this because if I waiting until the end of doing all my fondant and messed up on the fishnets then I would have to completely redo everything. I put the leg back in the fridge for the chocolate to harded then did the shoe and lamp shade.

I stacked my two rectangle cakes and put the leg lamp on top with icing to secure it.

Step 4:

I took my rice krispy squares and coated them in icing and put them into the refridgerator. I then roughly mixed up my brown fondants and rolled them out. I used this brown fondant to cover the squares. Once they were all covered I stuck them around my cake and covered the exposed areas with coconut.

Step 5:

My final touches were making chocolate piping detail on the lamp shade and sticking in piped chocolate "tassels". I also had some extra icing and dyed it brown and piped it around the ouside of my cake to hide sopts where icing was peeking out from under the wood.

You're done! That's it, it's a lot easier than I thought it would be at first.