Lomography

I made a cake that looks like a Diana Camera. Here's how I did it.

Before I was into photography, my primary artistic medium was baking and desserts. Although I still love to do this, it’s not as portable as my cameras are, since my oven weighs you know, maybe a few hundred pounds.

Anyways, my birthday is in a couple days. Ever since I can remember, I’ve baked my own cake. It’s my birthday present to myself! This year I wanted to go all out, and I wanted to involve my love of photography, somehow, since it’s something all my friends identify with me. I was also inspired by watching way too much Cake Boss.

To begin this cake, I made the modelling chocolate and fondant. I bought blue chocolate wafers from Bulk Barn. The blue colour was almost perfect, but I think if I did this again I would buy a higher quality of white chocolate and dye it myself. I found the blue modelling chocolate cracked a lot more than the black did.

I also bought milk chocolate wafers, and I mostly dyed the modelling chocolate black after I made it. I tried to do it with the corn syrup, but it ended up marbling the chocolate with black instead. Modelling chocolate is made by melting chocolate down (be careful not to burn it!) and adding corn syrup. Stir it, and it should start to look really strange, like chocolate chip cookie dough. Let it sit for a few hours, or over night, and it’ll be aces in no time. With non-white chocolate, you’re going to have to squeeze and get oil out of it, which is going to be the most disgusting thing you might ever do. Just try it. You’ll see. The white chocolate doesn’t have any cocoa butter so it doesn’t need to be squeezed.

The fondant is made from icing sugar, shortening, and corn syrup. I dyed it grey with a small amount of black dye. I wouldn’t recommend this type of recipe. The fondant turns out easy to use, but very greasy, and it doesn’t provide a very smooth finish. I forgot to take a photo of it, but you can see it in the final result.

Anyways, I made the cake, which wasn’t too hard. I made a perfect square for the base and covered it with the fondant. Then I moved onto the camera. To get the detailing just right, I cleaned and disinfected my actual Diana, and after kneading and playing with the modelling chocolate until it was soft (it takes a while – be patient), I rolled small pieces out and actually pressed them up on the camera. This gave them a negative of the bumpy texture on the real camera, which was good enough for me. I detailed the lens with a knife, to add ridges, and I painted the front of it with edible silver powder and literally a drop of vodka. I used a brand new art painting brush. No germs on this cake!

Once I did all the black chocolate work, I moved onto the blue. I found it very crumbly and hard to work with, and I got a lot of cracks. But I did the best I could, and I paid attention to details like the knob, which sits on its own little level, below the top of the camera. I painted the quadrilateral thing on the top of the camera with silver powder and vodka, then i painted the details with black dye. I made squares for the viewfinder, a smaller one in the back and a larger one in the front, and I placed the camera on top of the grey cake base. The last thing I added was the strap.

Final product:

And compared with the real Diana:

Happy birthday to me!!