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How to Make A Christmas Gonk Cake
• Lynsey Macdonald
When it comes to festive baking, a Christmas Gonk cake is always a popular choice! These cute little characters start appearing across our cakey community as soon as Halloween is over, and we love it every year. So, we created this tutorial to help you make your very own gonk cake, with a little help from our talented friend Chloe at @chloemaguirescakes!
Not only will you impress your family and friends, but using our collection of cake decorating products will make the project stress free!
Edibles Your choice of cake mix THE SUGAR PASTE in your choice of colours Chocolate Ganache (make your own or shop ready made ganache here!) Sweet Success White Modelling chocolate Edible Glue
Equipment Rolling pin Blade tool
Step 1. Bake your cakes
Baking the cakes that will form the body of your Gonk Cake is where it all starts. If you have a PME Doll pan this is ideal for creating the body. But alternatively, you can bake several sponge layers (decreasing in width) and place them on top of each other once baked.
Handy Hint: We used PME release-a-cake to grease the tins, so the cakes easily come out and in perfect shape!
Step 2. Assemble your gonk
Once baked, assemble the cakes with a layer of frosting and jam between each of them. To make the perfect gonk shape, you will have to trim each cake to create flat surfaces which fit together perfectly and form a cone shape at the top. This is the time consuming bit, but it's worth it to get the right shape.
Cover the cake with a crumb coating of ganache to seal it all in and hold it together.
Step 3. Decorate your Christmas Gonk Cake
Start by adding some cloud shaped pieces of modelling chocolate to the area that will become the hat. This will give it texture and stop that hat from looking flat!
Then cover the bottom of the cake with a section of sugarpaste - Chloe used The Sugar Paste in Navy for a lovely wintery tone. Use edible glue to attach two small round balls for the feet!
Wrap a second, narrower piece of sugarpaste around the gonk, draping it gently across the top of the feet. This creates the layers of his coat!
Use white sugarpaste rolled in elongated points to make the beard. Graduate in size as shown and mark with a blade tool or toothpick to create lines down each piece. Attach with edible glue around the base of the hat in an arc to leave space for the nose.
To create the nose, colour some white sugarpaste peach, roll into a ball then into an oval shape before pressing slightly flat. The nose should stay in place thanks to the arc we made with the beard, but use a little edible glue to secure it.
Step 4. Decorate the iconic Gonk Hat
To decorate the gonk's hat, take your other chosen colour of sugarpaste and roll out a section wide round to wrap entirely around the hat. Using either a texture mat or a clean, unused nail brush, create a textured effect the mimic fabric! There are some amazing options from Karen Davies for creating texture.
Once you're happy, wrap the sugarpaste around the hat area and get working on the details. Roll out a narrow strip of sugarpaste and mark little indents around the edge to form the brim of the hat. Then add a rope style piece of sugarpaste for extra detail. Finish off by using your blade tool again to create dents in the hat around where your modelling paste sits underneath. Don't go too deep and pierce through the sugarpaste, but push hard enough to get some definition. Chloe even added some blue edible dust to create shadows here!
Chloe also added a cute little poinsettia style flower to the side of her hat, made out of red and green sugarpaste..
To make the arms, roll out a sausage of navy icing and cut into two pieces to form the arms. You can either keep them solid or flare them out to form more of an open sleeve like Chloe did! Then take two small balls of sugarpaste in the colour matching the feet and create the shape of the mittens. Use your blade tool again to create the defined line for the thumb.
Step 5. Finishing Touches
For the perfect finishing touches, grab your favourite edible glitter and sprinkle a little over the gonk's hat for a snowy effect.
As you can see, Chloe's Gonk has a really shiny finish - she achieved this by using a cake steamer.
Thank you so much again to Chloe for creating this beautiful cake for us - we absolutely love him!
We hope you go on to try making this iconic Christmas gonk cake yourself. Be sure to tag us in your photos if you do - we're at @the_cake_decorating_co!
Looking for more inspo?
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