So Many Cakes

FortyEight – James and the Dumb Idea (January 10th, 2012)

How far are we into this thing? Forty eight? Crazy. You know there are only fifty-two, right? You realize that after 52, the project ends. I get the feeling that people don’t know this.

This is a year long project. I wanted to make 52 cakes, one per week, for one year. The original intention was to dump this golden nugget into the internet tubes – to live in this virtual space for 365 days – at which point I’d effectively disapparate from its surface, take my millions in donations and cake commissions, and move to like eastern Massachusetts with my four dogs or whatever. Plant some herbs. Observe foliage.

Things change, friends. Life doesn’t happen right, usually. You have big ideas and big plans to execute those big ideas and you get comfy in a spot and then all of a sudden you’re living on the internet. That being said, I’ll probably continue with this blog once 52 cakes are up, in some way shape or form. So everyone just relax.

To the left, please witness a slice of my childhood. James and the Giant Peach is a beloved children’s novel written by a morally questionable man named Roald Dahl. The movie came out when I was a kid, and I used to alternate falling asleep to that, and to Adam Sandler’s classic, “The Wedding Singer.” Both resonated with me, apparently.

The movie is actually very good – part of it is live action but most of it is stop-motion. It tells the story of James, a young boy living with his dickhead aunts in Southern England. He hijacks a giant peach in the hopes of flying it over to New York City, which makes absolutely no sense. Anyway there’s a neat scene in which they’re drifting in the English Channel and they rig up a bunch of seagulls to fly them the rest of the way. So that’s what you’re looking at.

Before I include photos of the construction, I thought it might be nice to show you guys what I do, through an accurate and not-at-all-rushed written and illustrated tutorial.

I don’t know how I could possibly make it more clear.

But for those who prefer boring photographs…here.

This one was fun – I experimented with “cake paint” (gel color + water) to give the peach a…peachy look. The spiral staircase thing is made from plain old cardboard, and I used straight floral wire for the seagull leashes. Bing bang boom that’s it and that’s all.

Took it over to friend Pat’s apartment on the upper west side, where people didn’t feel like eating it so much as they felt like ripping it to shreds with their man-hands.

OHHH HO HO YES

47: It'sa Me, Meh-rio (December 15th, 2011)

Once again, I find myself bested by that immoveable temptress, gravity. I was really just being dumb, though. I didn’t think this one through.

You might recognize this week’s cake as the piranha plant from Mario Bros. Probably my least favorite villain of the series, save for maybe the evil sun that follows you around in the desert levels. But I’ve always enjoyed the look of the Piranha Plant, especially in Mario64. If you killed it, you got a blue coin, which is equivalent to five coins, which roughly translates to 2.5 minutes of heightened self esteem. And as a person who spent years of her life playing the most namby-pamby video game in existence only to accumulate, realistically, maybe 60 stars out of a possible 120, I took what I could get, self-esteem-wise.

It was a cute little cake for about 4 minutes, then it started to sink. Serves me right. I made the head of the plant – the red part – out of cake, modeling chocolate, and fondant. The center is cake, it’s covered in a layer of modeling chocolate, and then there’s a layer of fondant.

I guess the idea with using the modeling chocolate was that it would create this super-smooth surface. It might have worked, had it not been so heavy. It was just sloppy. And then I put it on top? Of this tiny green cake? With no support? I don’t know what was happening in my head.

As soon as I stacked it, I knew that this thing was not going to stand. My solution? Add the details as quickly as possible and take pictures immediately. I now realize that this is not a realistic fix. I also realize that the word “fix” does not apply. I don’t know who I was trying to fool.

This cake was not eaten, nor was it really seen by anyone except maybe in the peripheral vision of my roommates. Which is, you know. Fine.

46 -> Here, Kitty Kerdy (December 4th, 2011)

I live in Brooklyn now! Too many people were occupying the street I lived on, so I took matters into my own hands. I said goodbye to Wall Street and hello to a borough in which real trees grow. So what does this mean. Well, it means I live four miles from where I used to live, but it takes about 40 extra minutes to get places now. Except for the dog biscuit store on the corner – that’s super close. And super convenient. For the dog that I don’t have.

This week’s cake was made a few weeks back, while I was still living in Manhattan. But we ate it in Brooklyn, so it still plays. I’ve been thinking a lot about the geography of New York City, as a result of my recent move. And what I’ve learned is that Brooklyn and Queens are large, Manhattan is small, the Bronx is farther away from me than I can even comprehend, and Staten Island is irrelevant. I’ve noticed that subways run beautifully and efficiently in Manhattan, and in Brooklyn, I saw a sign once on the F train entrance that said “you should probably just walk.” People are generally friendlier in Brooklyn, and the whole “hipster” thing, while not a myth, is a bit overblown. Manhattan is urgent. Everyone is late for something. There are so many neighborhoods packed into such a small space, that you get culture shock when you walk a block. In Brooklyn, there are front lawns, and people decorate them with cherubs. This list is comprehensive.

Below, you’ll find a visual aid. So accurate is this map, that you might want to use it instead of the internet, for all internet-related searches.

Ooooh, look. He’s got a tiny rubix cube.

So, the cake. If you can believe it, my original intention was for this to be a kitty cake. A cake that looks like a kitty. Some will argue that I accomplished this goal. Others will say that it looks like an ewok that is questioning its sexuality. In the end it didn’t really matter to me, because the thing took so long, and I just love the way it came out. And I blew through every episode of Parks and Recreation in the process, which was fun.

Here you will notice that I started out heading in a kitterly direction.

Then I started in with my new extruder, the tool I used to make all those little fur bits.

When I attached the nose and the eyes…that’s when I sort of knew that I was making something that was probably not a cat. But I powered through with the help of Ron Swanson and several beers.

I was really pleased with the outcome. But it did not go unnoticed that I yet again made a cake resembling a living creature that appears to have some sort of social anxiety disorder. Why do I keep doing that?

We ate the cake on Brittany and Katie’s roof in Brooklyn. Because of my recent lack of cake-eating pictures, I overcompensated, and told everyone that they needed to “act natural” so the pictures could be “candid.”

And I just don’t have an explanation for this one

Success. Another cake, in the books. Look at me here, smiling as if to say Hey Brooklyn. I’m going to live in you now. Deal with it.

Gross, hipster baby!

FortyFive: Adventures in Africa (November 11th, 2011)

I’d like to think that people come to this blog for life-altering advice, cake decorating tips, and truth bombs. In that order. That’s what I’d like to think. So here’s the moral of this post, children, let’s get it out of the way – follow your dreams. You can be anything you want! Want to learn how to fly an airplane? Do it. Want to hunt quails? Try it out. Want to create a startup website called Rationalpies? Where people can go when they’re feeling guilty about indulging in unhealthy food, only to be greeted with automated, personalized justifications? Well, don’t. That’s my idea.

My point is, it’s never too late to switch gears. All you have to do is declare your ambition as factual, and you’re already about 3/4 of the way there.

Here, I’ll show you an example.

I have declared it, and it is so. Let me explain.

This cake was a birthday cake for a kid named Robert. He’s the son of my high school pole vaulting coach. Robert is a cute child. Robert loves the animated film “Madagascar,” staring beloved icons such as Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Ross Gellar, and Will Smith’s wife. Robert wanted a Madagascar-themed cake, and I said, Robert, ask and you shall receive.

Falling back on old habits, I immediately started to cook up overly-ambitious plans in my brain-region. I will sculpt the likenesses of each main character, and they will be anatomically correct. I will make a 10-tiered cake, each tier depicting a pivotal scene in the movie. I will write, produce, and direct a sequel to Madagascar 2, completing the inevitable trilogy. For you, Robert.

I ended up settling on the sculpting thing. And I narrowed it down to just Ben Stiller’s character, Alex the Lion. Remember the declaration I made earlier, about being a sculptor now? For all the good it did, I might as well have declared that I’m a Civil War era general. Or a master of languages. Or

At the very least, I knew that fondant alone would not cut it for this one. So I experimented with modeling chocolate. I bought it this time, because the last time I tried to make it, it was a disaster. And I felt pressure to make this thing attractive, because four year olds are brutally honest. They are also liars.

Once the time came to actually sculpt, I froze. I had no idea what I was doing. But I sort of fudged it, and the end result wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen. After I sculpted the modeling chocolate, I covered it in fondant, and then I put on the rest of the details.

I planned this thing out way ahead of time, but there was one detail that I kept putting off – the mane. Alex’s mane is this ridiculous trapezoidal shape, and I knew from the get-go that I would have issues solving that structural issue. So I did the rational thing, and put it out of my mind until the night before the cake was due. I started racking my brain for creative solutions, and when “Pocky” popped into my headspace, I never looked back. I ran over to a local asian market, assuming that they would have Pocky. And they did. Of course they did.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Pocky – it’s a tasty japanese snack. A small dowel made of biscuit, covered in chocolate. About 50 to a pack. If you’re in a mall, and you pass a store that sells nerd paraphernalia, you will most likely find Pocky.

So I run over there, and find that they have a full stock o’ Pocky. But I notice that there is no price listed. “Kind sir,” I addressed the gentleman behind the counter, “what is the price of this Pocky, I wish to purchase a box or perhaps two,” to which he replied, “$1.99.” In the nerd stores, Pocky will cost you between $4-$5 per pack. So like an American nicotine addict in Eastern Europe, I stocked up. Actually, a camel finding a drinking hole is probably a better analogy.