Superman Sculpture Cake for a Super Man

Recently I had the privilege of creating my very first superman cake. Oddly enough one probably pictures two things when I say "I made a superman cake"- a 7 year old birthday boy and a cake shaped like superman's logo. The cake turned out to be for a man celebrating his 65th birthday and the cake was a little more than a logo. The man, whom his family lovingly refers to as "superman" has recently lived through both a liver and heart transplant. The cake happened to be a surprise gift to him from his wife in celebrating not only his birthday but the unique feat of conquering one of life's most difficult challenges.

The cake is actually very misleading. The dinner party was only for 15, so there wasn't much cake to be made. The whole top portion of the "cake" is a mix of styrofoam, rice krispy, modeling chocolate, fondant, and gumpaste. The base of the cake is tres leches cake with an almond buttercream frosting. The design of the cake is inspired by that iconic transformation when Clark Kent tears open his shirt coat to reveal his true identity, Superman. The symbolism of the super hero within seemed so appropriate for the recipient. This was certainly an exciting adventure and I hope to conquer such a challenge sometime soon.

The wife was kind enough to snap a pic and send it to me of the birthday boy and his cake.

Cheese! It's Your Birthday!

This weekend was a turning point in my very early cake career. Aside from launching my website, which you can find here, I made my first sculpture cake and absolutely loved it! I'm not sure why it took me so long to make such a cake since my background is in art and sculpture is one of my favorite mediums. I made this camera cake for a friend of mine who celebrated his 30th birthday yesterday and who happens to be a photographer. From baking to finish I completed the cake in record time, a whopping 5 1/2 hours, which is amazing fast for any sort of cake. I went with chocolate hazelnut pound cake, Nutella (the birthday boys fav), and french vanilla cream crumb coat and chocolate fondant. To assemble the cake I baked a 9 inch square and a 9 inch circle. I halved the square cake and used a tumbler to cut out smaller circles for the lens. After I spread the Nutella in between layers, I arranged the cakes together, then slathered french vanilla cream all over, and then rolled the chocolate fondant over. The rest was a piece of cake:) I notice that when creating a sculpture cake what makes it are the details. The more details, the better the cake sculpture. Stay tuned for more fun sculpture cakes in the future.