Extreme Cakes
Sometimes having an engineer in the
house has benefits beyond just keeping the plumbing working
by Lee H. Goldberg
I'm forever grateful that wife Catherine is one of the small percentage of the female population who is attracted to non-glamorous engineering types. Otherwise she'd have never chosen a geek like me instead of the more charming, handsome, or athletically gifted "alpha males." That's why, over the course of our decade-long adventure, I've done my best to reward her sensible choice by being a (relatively) reliable companion, a practical handyman around the house, and a halfway decent father.
Happily, she's also discovered that it can also be fun to have an engineer for a husband. Take, for instance, my daughter's birthday cakes which I make from scratch every year as part of our home-made parties.
Our tradition of home-grown birthday parties arises equally from modest finances and an aversion to the synthetic entertainment emporiums like Chuck E Cheese that so many of our daughter's friends favor. Most of our parties have been in our backyard but we've also experimented with other venues such as the community pool and the field near our house where the local college holds its Independence Day fireworks.
But while the venue may change from time to time the tradition of a home-baked cake does not. The rich, non-chemically flavored taste of a scratch-baked Texas sheet cake ensures you won't ever confuse one of my confections with the garden-variety kid cakes found at the grocery store or in those little cardboard boxes of cake mix. And, if you had any doubts, their lavish, eccentrically-themed decorations will make sure you know that this is not your grandmom's birthday cake.
In truth the inspiration for this culinary madness does come from a grandmom -- my mother. For my 11th birthday, she constructed an incredibly-elaborate "train cake", complete with a small edible engine and line of passenger cars running around the edge of a huge sheet cake on licorice tracks. Between the coconut grass, the peppermint wheels and dozens of other clever details it was apparent even to a kid of 11 how much work it took to make such a fabulous thing. It's one of my favorite childhood memories and never fails to make me smile.
In an echo of my own childhood, Anwyn can't remember what she got for her birthday last year, she has a distinct memory of what the cake looked like when she turned five. That year I translated her fascination with hot-air balloons into a rather spectacular 2-piece affair that tethered the multi-colored cake balloon to its edible gondola with ropes of red licorice.
Since then I've applied my engineering talents to create 3-D edible cartoons that somehow complement the theme of her party. While Anwyn gets to choose the theme, the actual details of the cake's design are kept secret to make sure she's as surprised as her guests when the cake arrives at the table.
On her 7th birthday I
announced to our guests that there'd been no time to make her usual cake
so we'd arranged with the restaurant who supplied the pizza for her party
to give us a special "dessert pizza." The kids roared with delight
as we opened the pizza box and revealed a pizza-shaped cake, topped with
red icing for "sauce," white chocolate "cheese," chocolate
pepperoni, and special hot gummy peppers for a little zip!
Last year, when Anwyn
turned eight, her friends joined her for a picnic/swim party at the community
pool. After lunch, they were greeted by a pool shaped cake, complete with
little Polly Pocket dolls swimming in double-strength blue
raspberry Jell-O. I had worked till 2 AM that morning dying the coconut
"grass," carving the pool, populating it with gummy fish and sharks,
and decorating the cake with doll accessories. It was such a hit that I
worried if I'd ever be able to top it for her 9th birthday.
This year's inspiration came to me from a variety of sources. Our trip to Hawaii a few years ago has left Anwyn permanently homesick for its warm waters, sandy beaches, and multi-racial natives that looked so much like her, so it was not surprising that she chose a luau theme for the party. While I briefly considered making a pineapple-shaped cake, a Hawaii-themed car I saw at an "art car" rally gave me the idea of creating an edible beach scene instead. Between this and my friend Nick's account of a "volcano" cake he made for his son's party which erupted green and red whipped cream "lava," I had the beginnings of a plan.
Since time was short
I could not recreate the plumbing that Nick had used to pipe the "lava"
into the cake from under the table. But I got lucky and found a plastic volcano that comes with a compound which lets
it erupt edible lava. I wasted no time fabricating a few palm trees, compounding
blue icing stiff enough to form waves, and grinding up cookies in a food
processor to create edible "sand" for the beach. All I had to
do then was wait till Anwyn was deep enough asleep to borrow a few of her
Polly dolls to complete the scene.
I'm not sure whether the resulting cake was quite as spectacular as last year's, but it was certainly a hit. The kids all loved the idea that we'd decided to let the erupting volcano stand-in for the usual candles whose flames we worried might set the palm trees alight.
After a minute or two
of ooh-ing and ah-ing, they proceeded to reduce my little island to a much
smaller collection of crumbs and blue icing streaks on the serving tray.
Everyone enjoyed it so much that Catherine even forgave me for falling asleep
after serving the cake while Anwyn unwrapped her presents.
It took a day or two to clean up the aftermath and recover, but I soon began casting about for ideas for next year's cake. I'm still not exactly sure what I'll be doing yet, but I think that it will probably involve some electronics: perhaps flashing LEDs, electronic music, or maybe even some servo motors.
Thankfully I've got nearly a year to come up with something.
Comments? Questions? Interesting ideas for cakes? Write me at lgoldberg@green-electronics.com.