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To begin with, I needed a picture of an arm to work from. I couldn't use my own arm as model, because I wanted a big, hairy man arm. So I turned to my brother-in-law, Barbara May's husband, who was a very good sport about me photographing his arm and incorporating it into the cake.
The first step was to make the fingernails out of gum paste. My brother-in-law has much flatter, squarer fingernails than I do, so it took me a while to get the hang of them and to find an appropriately curved surface to drape them over to dry. I also discovered that the key to sculpting realistic fingernails is the subtle, vertical striations. Take a close look, you'll see what I mean.
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I wanted to experiment with the skin before trying it on the real cake, both to find a good skin texture and because I hadn't used the airbrush much before and I wanted to make sure I knew how to handle it. So I rolled out some fondant and tried texturing it by pressing on it with various fabrics. The winning texture came from a blue dishtowel. I then made a couple of samples complete with protruding veins and let them dry before practicing airbrushing on them.
On the extras of one of the Lord of the Rings DVDs I saw a special effects guy explaining how the way to get a realistic skin coloring on a mask was to work outwards form the inside, that is, start with the veins, and build up the color in layers from there. So I tried it. I started by painting in blue and purple veins, then built up layers of reds, browns, yellows, pinks, and eventually white highlights on top. I think it worked pretty well, except that I need to learn some patience and let each layer dry completely before I do the next one.
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Next came the bones. The bones of the hand are made from hard candy, colored with white and a bit of yellow and brown food coloring. I poured it onto a silpat mat into the shape of finger and hand bones, making many more than I needed, so I'd be able to mix and match the appropriate ones.
I wanted to make the arm bones out of white chocolate, but I had trouble getting it to set up properly, so I wound up using candy melts instead, which really don't taste as good. For molds for the bones I wrapped acetate paper into thin cones. I filled these with melted candy, then dumped then candy out, leaving only a thin coating on the inside of the acetate. I needed hollow bones, of course, in order to fill them with marrow. I then set them upside down to dry, stuck through holes in a Fat Tire Amber Ale box that was sitting on a wire mesh, so excess candy could still drain out of them. Once that layer of candy dried, I repeated the process to build up thicker walls. Once they were dry it was easy to cut the bones to the correct length with a little patience and a serrated blade. Before filling them with marrow, I plugged up the smaller ends with royal icing.
The marrow inside of the bones is made of lemon curd, which Barbara May made for me. If you haven't had it, it's kind of like a super-intense lemon pudding, and we thought it would have just the right consistency for jiggly bone marrow.
After just a few seconds in the microwave, the lemon curd was soft enough to put into a piping bag and pipe into the hollow arm bones. I also put a little fresh raspberry sauce (basically just raspberries pureed with a bit of sugar and lemon juice and strained to remove the seeds) into the piping bag because I thought that bone marrow should have some red in it. Once each bone was full, I plugged the other end with royal icing as well.
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Assembling the bones of the hand took some doing. I built a form out of foam core to assemble the hand on in order to get the somewhat tented shape of a relaxed hand, then draped wax paper over that. One by one I selected bones and stuck them together by melting the ends with one of those big red lighters. Worried that this wouldn't be stable enough, I then piped royal icing over the top of the bones. In retrospect, I should perhaps have just made the bones out of royal icing in the first place. In any event, I should have given the royal icing more time to dry, because the hand wound up collapsing somewhat under the weight of the fondant skin and turned out flatter than I had hoped.
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The actual meat of the arm is made of a jelly roll cake, which was easy to cut into appropriate pieces and to wrap around the arm bones. The first step in assembling the arm was to stick a layer of cake onto the previously cut foam core base for the arm, using red currant jelly. I then slathered on another layer of red currant jelly and positioned the arm and hand bones. I added yet another layer of royal icing to the hand at this point, both to attach it to the arm bones and to give it a little more thickness and dimension. Then came another layer of red currant jelly, then more jelly roll cake and even more red currant jelly. I wanted to make sure the arm looked nice and red inside when it was sliced.
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I was finally ready for the nerve wracking process of skinning the arm. Or would it be unskinning the arm, since skinning usually means to remove the skin? Anyway, this was quite scary because effective skin needs a lot of subtle sculpting and texturing, but there is very limited period of time in which the fondant is still workable before it dries out. Gamely, I rolled out the fondant, and draped it over the arm. I covered the arm itself with plastic wrap to keep it moist and started with the hand, carefully trimming and pinching around the finger, adding veins and knuckles and pushing the gum paste fingernails into the soft fondant. I worked as quickly but as carefully as I could, so I could turn my attention to the arm itself. I made veins, protruding from the skin, running the length of the arm and then swiftly grabbed my blue texturing dishtowel. I was almost too late. The texture didn't come out as prominently as I had hoped, because the fondant had dried beyond the ideal texturing point, but I did get some good skin texture in places. I was content. I also pulled and frayed the skin at the back of the arm to give it that all-important violent torn away look.
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Next step - coloring. Again, the build up from the purple-blue veins all the way to the white highlights. I clearly didn't learn my lesson last time because again I failed to allow sufficient dry time between coats, which resulted in a few runny spots. I cursed myself and added some brown and purple shadows to cover the imperfections.
The hair making process has been amply discussed in the Rats section, so suffice it to say that I carefully draped the arm hair in the appropriate direction, in some places almost hair by hair. Again, I overairbrushed a little when I went to make the hair brown, but at least it stuck the hair firmly down to the arm. Finally, the fingernails required some brush painting to get the subtle coloring just right. Take a look at your own fingernails; they're more complicated that you think!
And here we will leave the arm for a little while, while I move on to . . .
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