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Sugar Geek University - Hyper-Realistic Cake Tutorials
A cake that people refuse to believe is cake. That is the whole game here, and it comes down to a handful of techniques: molding real objects, coloring and pouring isomalt, painting texture, and knowing which details sell the illusion.
Start with the free ones below. Each is a single component you can practise in an afternoon, and every one of them turns up again inside the full tutorials.
FREE TO WATCH
How to make fondant pepperoni that actually looks greasy and curled at the edges. The exact technique that goes on the realistic pizza cake.
Building a burger patty out of fondant, with the char marks and crumbled texture that sell it as meat.
A one-minute look at painting fondant so it reads as rough stone rather than smooth sugar.
Casting a clear, wet-looking eye in isomalt. This is where transparency starts if you want glass, liquid or ice on a cake.
A grab bag of realism effects you can add to almost anything, in under twenty minutes.
A quick edible eyeball, start to finish. Small, fast, and the results look alarmingly real.
A cake that looks like a bowl of wet cat food. Nobody wants to eat it, which is exactly the point.
A realistic candle cake, including the part where it goes wrong and how I saved it.
How to make edible leather, for anything that needs to look worn, stitched or tanned.
Clear, firm homemade jello. The base for anything that needs to look like liquid caught in the act.
A cake that looks like a stack of pancakes and tastes like them too.
Ready for the rest?
Everything below this point is inside Sugar Geek University. Full-length tutorials, start to finish, nothing skipped, and something new from me every month.
MEMBERS ONLY
My award-winning realistic burrito cake, the one that has gone viral more than once. This version has a twist, and it went to the Great American Baking competition.
Guest instructor Joyce Marcellus builds a taco cake, bringing several techniques that carry over to any realistic food build.
Guest instructor Timbo Sullivan of Cakes by Timbo brings his own style and tricks to a pulled pork sandwich that looks good enough to order.
Kristin Eagles carves and decorates a pizza so convincing you may catch yourself saying momma mia. Crust, cheese, sauce and pepperoni, all edible.
Kristin Eagles makes a turkey cake that has guests asking whether they are having second dinner.
A realistic apple pie cake with edible filling, an edible pie dish and a proper crust. Built for a Thanksgiving table.
Candy lettuce, tomato, onion, cheese and patties, plus a beer glass gummy. Uses many of the tricks from Food Network’s Ridiculous Cakes.
Guest instructor Mitchie Curran makes edible root beer bottles, an edible bottle holder, an edible glass mason jar and ice cream that is not ice cream.
A pancake cake that tastes like pancakes, a gravity-defying syrup bottle and candy breakfast, using tricks from Food Network’s Ridiculous Cakes.
The most iconic shoe there is, in cake. Shaping, layering the panels, the laces, the polish, and a shoe box to sit it in.
Shannon Patrick Mayes of The Sweet Spot builds a realistic beer mug and a sculpted steak, with the lifelike detail that sells a backyard BBQ.
The huge sugar crab boil from my Super Mega Cakes episode that won team Duff $10,000. Ninety minutes: molding a real crab, coloring and pouring isomalt.
Realistic blackberry gummies on a blackberry cake, made for a brand deal with the Oregon Berry Commission. Molding the berries, the container, the assembly.
I made this realistic potato chips bag cake for the release of the new season of Is It Cake. In this tutorial I show how I make the realistic chips, the crinkled bag, and how to put it all together.
That’s the whole realistic cake library.
Join and you get all of it, plus sculpted cakes, wedding cakes, sugar flowers, cookies and sugarwork, with something new from me every month.