SHINee’s BACK! Three members of this legendary K-Pop group came back from military service and managed to squeeze in an album (and soon-to-be album repackage) before the last one gets his turn in the mandatory service. Their title track is a little more aggressive that what we’re used to hearing from them, but nonetheless, it’s a bop.

Fake Reality

I’ve always wanted to try decorating a cake with a palette knife and thought I’d use this “comeback cake” as my chance to do so. Working off teaser images from both versions of the album, I artistically and abstractly painted on the “fake reality” scene with the house and trees.

The base “canvas” was frosted on first and refrigerated to firm up the icing so that I had something to work on. I was so nervous about getting it right, working with little bits of icing at a time, that the cake got too warm at certain points that I had to put it back in the fridge so the icing colors won’t smear into each other.

I learned quickly that I probably used the wrong icing. I’m a new convert to Ermine frosting which is basically a pudding base that’s whipped into room temperature butter. Although it tastes good, it was a struggle to work with using this technique. I think a basic (firmer) buttercream would have been better.

Reality Side

The “reality side” is still a little more abstract and didn’t have a firm concept so I just took the color queues from the darker images that featured an urban setting. The “flowers” came from one of the pictorials in the book. I wanted to incorporate them somehow. I also made a rice paper flower as a topper and lined the edges with silver lustre dust. The last step was to add shards of candy melt as a transition for both sides.

I think it turned out okay. Not what I had in mind but fun to make nonetheless. Next time I think I’ll take my time to think the concept through and practice some techniques a little more.