You see, up to this point, I have only been able to get the effects that I want by using fondant. I missed out on some cakes, just because people don't like fondant. This will save me the expense of making all the fondant I've had to make in the past as well. These two reasons combined could end up making this a worthwhile expense, because I may get more cakes to do (thus increasing my experience level) and two because I won't have the added expense of making fondant all the time.
Just to give you an example, I recently made a baby shower cake for my step-daughter's friend. She said I had free creative reign, so I could make whatever I wanted. Her theme was "baby RealTree". So, I wanted to do something "woodsy". I had in mind to make a tree stump with baby animals looking up at it and have a baby lying on top of the tree stump. As I carved the cake, I thought to myself..."Man it is going to be tough to get fondant all the way down this cake and still have enough fondant left over to cover the "tree roots". Then it hit me...Duh...you have an airbrush (but in the back of my mind I was thinking about how I had NEVER airbrushed a cake before). I thought about how I could use the airbrush to paint the cake instead of using buttercream...and this is what I came up with.
After I had the cake carved to the shape of a tree stump, I covered it liberally with buttercream. I used a crusting buttercream (this is important, you'll soon find out why). After covering the cake with buttercream, I used a form to scratch "bark" impressions into the buttercream. First I cut out a heart shape in waxpaper and placed the paper on the cake and sprayed it yellow. This was for the babies name (to look like it was carved in the tree). Once it dried slightly, I covered it with the heart shape I cut out of the wax paper, so it wouldn't get sprayed on again as I painted the rest of the stump. I then started covering the rest of the stump's buttercream with a light spray of forest green, brown, black, harvest yellow and lighter still with red. I sprayed the top with a harvest yellow and sprayed on wood grain in black. Here is the finished results:
