Sugar Geek Show logo

menu icon
subscribe
search icon

Published on December 25, 2021 by · This post may contain affiliate links ·

Rotating Airplane Cake Tutorial

Skill level: Advanced

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a realistic snow-capped mountain with a rotating airplane made from edible materials that appears to fly around the mountain!

This tutorial is packed with high-level tips and tricks, everything from how to make food-safe molds of complicated shapes and toys like the airplane I molded, to hooking up motors and structure that will create some really cool special effects.

2:06:47 Minutes of Instruction

What You Will Learn

  • Learn how to create a chocolate airplane from a mold you will make yourself
  • How to create the structure and use motors that will make the airplane rotate around the cake
  • Learn how to create one-part, two-part and pour molds using food-safe materials
  • How to airbrush the plane to add realistic details and designs
  • Learn how to sculpt and create a snow-capped mountain

Tutorial Chapters

  1. Stacking the cake 0:30
  2. Overview of the motor 5:40
  3. How to bend threaded rod 13:04
  4. How to cut threaded rod 14:23
  5. Making the structure 16:04
  6. Making the foam core box 20:39
  7. Attaching the motor to the base 23:29
  8. Adding the cake board 25:26
  9. Adding the rice cereal treats 26:22
  10. Adding the cake 27:54
  11. Overview of the tools 30:31
  12. Assessing the object 34:51
  13. Adding the clay 36:45
  14. Making the box 44:12
  15. Making the mold base 46:27
  16. Cutting out the walls 48:21
  17. Gluing the walls 51:54
  18. Mixing the silicone 54:10
  19. Pouring the silicone 56:55
  20. Removing the box and toy 59:06
  21. Testing the one-part mold 1:01:47
  22. Removing the test mold 1:04:05
  23. Preparing the wings 1:05:24
  24. Making a two-part mold 1:08:09
  25. Pouring the wing silicone: Part 1 1:20:36
  26. Pouring the wing silicone: Part 2 1:22:59
  27. Making a silicone rubber one-part mold 1:26:53
  28. Making a pour mold 1:30:03
  29. Unboxing the molds 1:30:36
  30. Making the chocolate molds 1:33:43
  31. Unmolding the chocolate pieces 1:36:28
  32. Shaving down the chocolate molds 1:40:45
  33. Attaching the rudder and elevators 1:41:24
  34. Coloring the fondant 1:42:27
  35. Adding and texturing the fondant 1:44:26
  36. Painting the snow 1:47:47
  37. Adding the fondant snowcap 1:49:18
  38. Making the airplane base 1:51:41
  39. Adding the airplane base 1:53:20
  40. Adding the wings 1:55:51
  41. Attaching the airplane 1:56:45
  42. Adding the fondant clouds 1:58:12
  43. Painting the plane 2:01:28
  44. Airbrushing the plane 2:03:29

More Course Preview

About Liz Marek

Liz Marek is a professional cake artist and recipe developer who has been teaching baking and cake decorating since 2008. She founded Artisan Cake Company in Portland, Oregon in 2009 and now runs Sugar Geek Show, where she publishes kitchen-tested recipes, food science explanations, and step-by-step tutorials.

Liz is best known for sculpted and hyperrealistic cakes. She won Netflix's Is It Cake? Holiday 2 in 2025 with a hyperrealistic Santa cake, and has competed on and won Food Network cake competitions. Cake Masters Magazine named her one of the top 10 cake artists in 2017. She is the author of Artisan Cake Company's Visual Guide to Cake Decorating and a graduate of the Oregon Culinary Institute.

Her focus is on explaining not just how a recipe works but why it works, so bakers can troubleshoot instead of guess. Every recipe on this site is tested before it's published.

Liz teaches full-length cake tutorials, including sculpted and hyperrealistic cakes, at Sugar Geek University.