Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Sand "Castle"

Wade told someone that if he ever got a themed cake, he'd want it to somehow combine his two great loves: beach vacations and the UT Vols. Never ones to shrink from a challenge, the creative minds at Caldwell Cakes dreamt up a sand-castle version of Neyland Stadium.

It was a little more involved than we expected, mostly because it was an entire scene instead of simply an object, so the "essence" was much more difficult to capture. The slopes were carved in for realism, and also to allot room for the huge separately-built-and-coated cake stadium. We stuck on the skyboxes and jumbotron, slid the whole piece into place, and sprinkled graham cracker crumbs around for effect. Since it's supposed to be made of sand, we didn't have to worry about most of the details (colors, etc.), but that also allowed it to come out kind of like some sort of fun beachtime bathtub set. Ah well.

The umbrella is just one of those oversized drink garnishes, and the pail and shovel are molded leftover fondant. Tara wrapped a decorative post (previously an elephant's leg, by the way) in brown strips to look like a palm trunk; then carefully designed, cut, and fastened the leaves--I really like the way it looks.

The wobbly fenceposts were an easy final touch, but they just totally say "beach" to me.


Sunday, July 20, 2008

Baseball Glove

One of Tara's co-workers requested a cake for her son's birthday, and it was eventually settled upon that the design should be baseball-themed. We had to buy a glove to get the modeling just right, but this gave us a chance to test out a sort of reverse-engineering method. Instead of trying to reinforce the cake with a dowel/platform skeleton as usual, I built the structure and fit the cake into it. Consequently, the hand was able to open outward from the base without becoming unstable. Still, even after the fondant it didn't look like much until Tara marked the fingers and added the "stitching." The ball, if you're wondering, is a separate piece of cake with red and black piping.

The end product had Hayden's name, too, but I didn't get any great pictures of it at that point. Oh, and this was also our first paying gig! Woohoo!