The Luggage

This is the largest cake I’ve ever made.

The Luggage is a character from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. It’s a treasure chest with legs that follows its owner around on his adventures. If an enemy tries to open the Luggage, they see a scary mouth and get eaten. But the owner and his friends can access his belongings.

It was really important to me that the lid be able to open and close, but I don’t think we took any pictures of it closed!

This was for a friend’s birthday party. The theme that year was Economics. The Luggage tangentially fit because its owner introduced Economics to the Discworld in The Color of Magic. But really, I just thought it’d make her happy.

The mouth flap was a removable piece of gumpaste that revealed the precious possessions inside.

The cake was chocolate and I covered and filled it with chocolate ganache. Ganache firms up more than buttercream, so it’s better for large cakes thatneed a lot of structure.

The legs were made out of modeling chocolate, sculpted around armature supports.

And the wood grain effect was created by twisting different shades of fondant together. I searched for YouTube tutorials to figure out this effect, and the results led me to Zoe’s Fancy Cakes. That channel has been a huge inspiration for me ever since!

The top layer was rice krispy treat, because I wanted something firm underneath where the lid would be opening and closing.