Homies T-shirt Cake - A Decorating Tutorial

I made this Homies t-shirt cake for a customer. She gave the picture of a t-shirt (I cannot locate the picture anywhere on my pc so I am unable to share it here) and told me to make a cake that looks exactly like the t-shirt including the font type, size and color.

A white cake in the shape of a t-shirt, decorated in black and white

I must say, I was not quite sure if I would be able to produce the white blotches on the letters and numbers on the cake at first. My customer and I agreed upfront that I will try to create the blotched effect on the letters and numbers but in case I am unable to do it, she agreed that she does not mind settling for plain black letters and numbers.

So I set on making this Homies t-shirt cake.

Here is how I made this Homies T-shirt Cake:

These were the main supplies I used to make and decorate the cake:

Raw Material

Cake – the cake was baked in an 8-inch square tin and the sleeves were carved out from another smaller cake. Both were made using my butter pound cake recipe.
Buttercream – As in almost all my cakes, I used buttercream to fill the cakes and crumb coat them.
Fondant – This cake was covered in my homemade fondant. I used only 2 colors, i.e. white and black.
Gum paste – I used gum paste for the birthday message on the cake as well as the birthday boy’s name. The gum paste I used here was Satin Ice in white and I tinted it black with my black food coloring.
Shortening – this acted as the glue for all my fondant work on this cake, including attaching the custom cut letters and numbers, the birthday message, and the birthday boy’s name as well as the cake border.

Tools

Letters and numbers template – the word “HOMIES” and the number “2014” were individually hand cut out of fondant. I did not use any cutters or molds. Instead, I typed the words and numbers in a Mircosoft Word document, choose the font type that best matched my customer’s request, set them to the size I wanted them to be on the cake, and then choose the outline option before I printed them out on a piece of paper. I then cut them all out following their outlines.
Tappit letter cutters – I used this cutter for the birthday message on the cake as well as the birthday boy’s name.
Stitching tool – I used this tool to create the stitch marks on the collar and edges of the t-shirt sleeves.
Sugarcraft knife – I used my ever so purposeful craft knife to cut out the custom letters and numbers on the cake.

And this was how I assembled this Homies T-shirt cake:

Wordings on the cake

As mentioned above, I used custom made paper templates for the word “HOMIES” and the number “2014”. I cut these out of black fondant using my paper templates. For the white blotched effect, I let the fondant letters and numbers rest for a few minutes to allow them to set slightly. And then, I dipped the tip of my small paint brush (the brush bristles must be dry and very soft so as to not leave any marks on the fondant) into white food coloring, and very lightly blotched the paint at random spots on the letters and numbers.

The cake

As for the cake itself, I used my 8-inch square cake as the main part of the cake. And then the sleeves were cut out of another 6-inch cake. I attached the sleeves to the cake with some buttercream. And then I carved a small collar for the T-shirt.
Before I did the carving, I actually drew the Homies t-shirt template on a large piece of paper. That way, I was certain my carving will be balanced on both sides of the cake. Once all the carving work was done, I crumb coated the whole cake with a thin layer of buttercream. And then I covered it with white fondant.

The cake border

For the cake border, I hand rolled 2 long thin rolls of fondant, one in white and one in black. I attached these to the cake with shortening.

The front of a cake shaped like a tshirt.

Next to go on the cake were the “HOMIES” and “2014”. Again, I used shortening to secure them to the cake. And finally, I attached the birthday message and the birthday boy’s name on the cake board.