Now I know...

This is my six year old Logan's birthday cake.  He wanted a Ninjago cake!  

I wanted to make legos stacked on each other with the four main Ninjagos around the cake. Each Ninjago had "their" weapon the they use.  Each Ninjago was made of gumpaste mixed with fondant.  I was happy how my "Lego green" board turned out.  I covered a thin wood board with fondant and made little lego nubs  out of fondant as well.  

The details to each Ninja were painted on with food coloring and a tiny paintbrush.  

  I wanted to achieve crisp "Lego" like edges, so I opted to give modeling chocolate a try.  It hardens unlike fondant, so if you get crisp edges they shouldn't soften like fondant can. I know I hated using modeling chocolate for figures, but I thought I would try it as a covering on this cake. 

And now I know that is is NOT good to cover a cake with the chocolate.  It was so annoying to work with, it just wasn't doing what I wanted it to do.  The modeling chocolate was cut into side and top pieces that were measured to cover each cake block correctly.  But behold...cracking!   

The modeling chocolate was very brittle and began flaking off at edges as well.  Luckily I have a great son who could not have cared less.   Inside the cake (forgot to take a picture, I was too excited to chop up the cake and be done with it) was bubblegum flavored cake.  I used a basic white cake recipe, and added a drum of Loranne Oil, bubblegum flavoring.  This gave the cake a "hint" of bubblegum flavoring, the real flavoring was in the frosting.  I used Duncan Hines new "Flavor packets".  I made my own frosting and added one packet to 6 cups of frosting..plenty of flavoring!  It tasted just like pink bubblegum!  Those of us tasters were saying how our mouths wanted to keep chewing the cake, as if it was gum.  It was pretty fun for a kid cake.  So now I know, that I hate modeling chocolate  yes hate.  I don't like it at all and have sworn it off.  Fondant the only one for me!