44 – Yer a Wizerd, Harry (October 22nd, 2011)

When I made the decision to make a Harry Potter cake, I said to myself – well, self, you had better do this thing right. I set out to make a photo-realistic action pose based on Daniel Radcliffe’s portrayal of our beloved Harry, and you know what? I nailed it. You can’t deny that I nailed it.

I have a literary boner for the Harry Potter series. So much so, that if someone starts a conversation about HP, I have to excuse myself. If I don’t, I will, within minutes, expose myself as a terrible conversationist. When it comes to small talk, I am inept. In the moment, I can’t even begin to think of a relevant question. I’ll usually locate an object in our immediate area, and express my approval or disapproval. That’s my go-to. “Your shoes are brown, and I like that about them,” “That lamp is like, it’s super bright. Must be at least a hundred watt bulb,” “Oh my god, rain, I hate it, it makes my clothes wet,” “So were you born with freckles? Or what?”

My point is, HP is a topic that I am comfortable talking about, and I’ll often cling to it in lieu of attempting traditional conversation. That being said, let me talk about it for a little while.

Harry Potter has been a part of my life since 7th grade. I went to all the midnight book sales, I’ve read each book multiple times. The first book was released in the US in the Fall of 1998, when I was just shy of 11 years old – the age at which I’d start my first year at Hogwarts. Yes. My first year. I’m blurring the lines of reality, try to keep up. That first book was written for an 11 year old kid. The second, a 12 year old. By the time the last book came out, I was 19, and the subject matter had matured at pretty much the same rate as me. Harry was a snotty, angry, pubescent boy in the 5th book. I was 16. Shit was relevant.

See what’s happening, here? I could talk for hours about how I KNEW Snape wasn’t a bad guy. I could go on for days about the terrible mistake it was to cast Michael Gambon as Dumbledore. But I won’t. Because you’re bored.

As I was saying before, you’ll notice that this cake is indistinguishable from a still shot of a Quidditch scene from one of the movies. It’s that good. Right down to those beautiful baby greens. I especially enjoy how spindly his arm is, in relation to his fat head.

I probably spent most of the time on the hair. That was annoying. There’s this thing called an Extruder – it’s a tool used to push clay through patterned holes. Think about that play-doh toy where you crank the thing and make play-doh hair push out in long strands and then get bored to a point where you’re just sitting on the floor, smelling it. That’s an Extruder. And at the time of this cake construction, I did not own one yet. So I had to make the strands by hand. An extruder would have cut my work time in half, and it also would have looked cleaner. Hindsight.

I had big dumb plans for the glasses that involved a wire structure. I made the wire structure, was quite pleased with it, and when it came to implementation, everything went to shit. So I ended up just using straight-up fondant, which worked well enough.

As I made each individual strand of hair, I was able to reflect on the cultural significance of HP. I thought about how many hours of my life I’ve spent inside the world that JK Rowling created, how many hours I’ve spent wishing it were real, and that I could be a part of it. After a while I started thinking about well maybe if Harry were to read a book about my life, he would wish he could swap lives with me.

For example: How would Harry deal with the arrival of a new niece?

And Ron – how would he approach the obstacle of sort of actively trying to eat better and exercise more?

I imagine Hermione would have no trouble mastering something like crochet – I’ve taken it up recently and lord knows I wouldn’t be able to whip up this tiny scarf

And He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, how would he manage his finances? Surely the current state of the economy and my laughable salary would rival his struggle for immortality.

Ok, so, yeah. Fine. Not interesting. Any excuse to draw Voldemort in khaki slacks.

We ate Harry’s face one quiet evening, an evening filled with ice cream and Skip Bo. It was magical.

See what I did there.

43: Movie Magic (November 11th, 2011)

Instead of me squawking at you about my process, how about I just let modern technology take the reins this week, yeah?

Jack was working on a time lapse app, and decided to test it on me as I made the keyboard cake. And thank the almighty clam he did, because otherwise this would have been a pretty boring post featuring a cake that is just meh.

Keep in mind – this video is in real time. Really.



If this movie had a poster it would probably look something like this:

Oh and here’s a trailer of sorts. It’s got a TWIST ENDING a la M. Night Shamalamadingdong

If I’ve learned anything from this experience it’s that WHOA my bangs are too long, why didn’t anyone TELL ME.

Forty-Two: Maygim anoffah eecan’ refoos (October 5th, 2011)

Roses! Blue-ass roses. It’s a new thing I’m trying – taking things that are usually red, and making them blue. You may remember the blue lobster cake I made with Adam a few weeks back. It’s just…it’s just how I operate, you know? Challenge the status quo. It’s a complexly abstract concept, and I don’t expect you to understand it. But I promise you, it’s extremely impressive. Red…to blue. Genius.

Of course, blue roses exist in the world, as do blue lobsters, but if you feel the need to point that out, then you just don’t get it. Alright enough of that. I chose to do a cake covered in roses because I have been hired to make a wedding cake for an actual wedding in which there will be an actual bride and an actual groom and actual guests that will be actually looking at it, taking pictures of it, and eating it. This undertaking is, of course, more daunting than it is exciting, in my dumb head. Coming to my point here – the bride has requested a clean, simple, traditional design plus a wall of cascading roses. This cake is practice.

I have to make a side-note here: a good number of you, namely the ones who came over from Reddit, are confused right now because it is well known to you that this wedding cake has already been made, looked at, and eaten. This is true. In real time, if we’re going to be real, here, the wedding was last weekend (October 1). But I’m extremely behind on cake posts, if you haven’t noticed, so just play along, and also be cool.

The moment I realized that I was going to have to make dozens of edible flowers for a wedding cake, I made it my business to work on my technique. People swear by the gum paste method – which is just to use gum paste when making flowers – but for this cake, I used fondant. Because, I don’t know. I am comfortable with fondant, and I don’t like change. I have since become best friends with gum paste.

These flowers were made by rolling various-sized balls of fondant, individually schmooshing them out into petal shapes, and placing them strategically around a conical fondant bud.

The process was tedious. And it was my first attempt at edible flowers, and if you know anything about that practice, you’ll know that it is an art form. Not easily adapted. People like, specialize in the art of making flowers that you can eat. So it was a daunting task, and ultimately frustrating. For a first try, though – eh, it was fine.

When I say that it was a tedious task, I mean that my mind wandered a lot. My brain was very impressionable, just sitting there manipulating fondant. I do remember that The Godfather was on TV, and some roommates watched it from start to finish as I worked. I couldn’t devote my full attention to it, but I think I got the gist of it.

This is the famous scene where Don Corleone holds a cat, and is a better man for it:

It took me the better part of the movie to realize that Marlon Brando’s character’s name was not “Donald.”

Next we see that goddamned Jeremy come in and ask the Don for a favor, which he is not please about, but since his daughter is getting married, he has to oblige:

And here we are, still in the first scene of the movie, where young Michael Corleone tells his girlfriend that his dad is a dick and he’s going to pursue a different career:

Michael then murders some people and has to go into hiding. He quite enjoys the Italian countryside, and that wife he found:

Back in the US, Michael’s brother, Sinbad, gets shot up. This very much upsets Donald. Michael comes back and takes over the family business. Sequence is questionable, here.

In the end we learn that Donald never wanted this life for his son, and he is soon after murdered by his toddler grandson with a gun made out of a hand.

And that’s pretty much it! My movie cliff notes, and you are welcome. The pictures of this cake have such a huge association with this movie for me now. Both elegant, classic, and overly time-consuming.

41: Shut up, Gravity (September 18th, 2011)

I don’t want to have the type of blog that is fueled by self-deprecation. But the only way to describe this week’s cake is by using some combination of the words failure, ignorance, sloppish, and jealousy-infused rage. Let’s start from the beginning.

This cake was made for an annual contest hosted by Threadless.com. If you’ve never been to the site, and you have any interest whatsoever in incredible artwork on t-shirts, then I suggest you type “www.threadless.com” into a new tab and browse it when you’re finished reading this post, for I am too lazy to turn that text into a direct link. It’s Sunday. My life is full.

Anyway, this was my submission. It’s a gramophone. I think. I googled “old-timey record player with horn” for confirmation. It totally worked.

The idea is that you’re supposed to browse Threadless’ myriad user-contributed printed T graphics, choose one, and turn it into either a two-dimensional or three-dimensional cake. There are separate awards for 2D/3D. You may remember learning last week that I have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew when it comes to creative projects. This week was no different. After friends talked me down from the preposterous notion that I could make a 4D cake and just BLOW SOME MINDS, I settled for a 3D replica of this lovely design:

Sure, let’s choose the one with the giant horn containing a giant rose supported by a spindly neck. Yes. That. I choose that one. My plan of attack was misguided and complex. It involved a wire structure and a strategic foundation. I forgot to factor in gravity, which is weird, because gravity and I go way back. I used to be a gymnast, a diver, and a pole vaulter. I learned early on that gravity is not open to negotiations. I also learned early on that gravity takes the form of a little fat cynical periwinkle guy if I think about it long enough/deprive myself of sleep.

As I said earlier, my plan involved a wire structure. I picked up some heavy-duty coiled wire at a hardware store, and got to sculpting this horn. I was actually very pleased with the final structure. But from there, the plan was to cover it in modeling chocolate, and that’s where I ran into the problems. The thing must have weighed 25 pounds when I was finished with it. Another mistake I made was the decision to make my own modeling chocolate using a recipe I found on the internet. There were two ingredients. Chocolate, and corn syrup. It did not look good, it did not taste good, and it did not handle well. All-around failure, there.

By the time I got to the rose, I was burnt out. I had already spent days trying to figure out how to make this thing work only to hear resounding NOPEs from every avenue I tried. This is the part where you feel sorry for me and applaud my heroic efforts in the face of adversity. Go ahead. I’ll start a new paragraph while you do that.

The rose is gum paste. It was my first real experience with gum paste. It did not go well. Gum paste is similar to fondant, but it dries harder and is good for details and accents. It’s the material of choice when it comes to edible flowers. A lot of people swear by it, and others will tell you that fondant will get the job done just as well. Personally, at this moment, I don’t give a shit, because look at the monstrosity I’m making. I could have used a genetically altered giant rose, and it wouldn’t have saved this cake.

It became clear that this horn was not going to stand on its own, so I admitted defeat and just held it up with my hands.

I went ahead and submitted the cake to Threadless, even though I knew it didn’t stand a chance in hell at winning anything except maybe a “nice try” ribbon. If you’re wondering which cakes took first prizes, I’ve included them below, and you will now understand where the “jealousy-infused rage” part of the process factors in.

This one was for 3D:

And this one was for 2D. This girl can suck a nut. I hate her talent.

I did not win, and this moment was by far the most satisfying part of the process:

Forty. Vincent Van Nope. (September 5th, 2011)

Behold, the fruits of something like 20 hours of unnecessary labor. You might recognize this cake as a rendition of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” Or you may not recognize it, if you are an uncultured peasant. In which case, kindly leave my blog, and take your chickens with you.

Seriously though, the goal here was to make a textured mosaic-of-sorts, and I needed an image that had some texture already in it, and also one that was recognizable. Personally, I don’t know what the deal was with Van Gogh’s ear. So if you came here to hear my thoughts on the whole ear thing – leave with your chickens, etc.

When I say “20 hours of unnecessary labor,” I mean that I put a whole lot of time and effort into this thing, and the result doesn’t really reflect that. It’s not terrible, but it just does not convey the fact that I was pasting little blips long into the night over the course of several nights. I do this all the time. I get an idea for a project, and I rationalize my way into believing that it’ll take like a hot minute to complete as long as I keep my head down and plow through the work. Like when I convinced myself that I could put all 3,000 of my parents’ old family photos into new photo albums in a matter of a few days. Like when I decided to make chicken parm for 11 people in like an hour. Like when I swore I’d eat an entire airplane.

I bite off more than I can chew, and when it comes to execution, I am the model of inefficiency. I don’t explore helpful shortcuts or time-savers. I do everything roundabout. I don’t like change. This personality flaw affects me negatively in literally every aspect of life. I haven’t updated iTunes in like 3 years.

So what’s the solution? Justification. Below, you will find my easy how-to guide for the like-minded individuals who would rather cut off their arm before googling “what’s the keyboard shortcut for copy/paste again?”

Print it out, if you need to.

So let’s get to it already. The whole idea was to use lots of tiny fondant cutouts to create a textured image. None of my cutters were small enough to achieve the result I wanted, so I used a little flower cutter, and cut off the little tear-shaped petals. That was probably the most time consuming part – cutting out all the flowers and removing each petal individually.

Oh my god that took forever. I just sat there for hours, removing petal after petal after petal. James stopped by to show his support:

After everyone had gone to bed and I had exhausted The Office on Netflix, I just sat there alone in silence and plucked the petals. Then came the voices.

Ugh, the voices. So honest. I wish they had told me that I was dissecting about triple the necessary number of flowers. Huge overcompensation, there.

So I had the 6″ template, and I got to pasting. I traced the fondant lightly with a sharp skewer to vaguely outline the design, then I just started strategically placing. That also took a million hours.

The completion of this cake happened to coincide with a visit to my brother Joey/fiance Kateri and their brand-ass-new baby, Caroline. Like, extremely new baby. Don’t underestimate how new this baby was. Joey, Kateri, and Caroline had literally been home from the hospital for a couple hours before friend Kathryn and I showed up.

I was holding Caroline and all of a sudden I hear this noise from within her tiny belly that indicated to me that some sort of substance was about to come shooting out of some sort of orifice. Assuming the worst, I immediately went from holding her against me to holding her at about an arm’s length, and lo, she blorched more formula than I could ever imagine would be able to fit in such a small being. What I took away from this experience – ain’t no matter how much love I have for a newborn niece, I am not about to be thrown up on. I will sacrifice this baby’s comfort, and also your carpet, if need be.