Extreme Cakes 2007: The Carousel
Sometimes you have to go to the party with the cake you have
rather than the cake you want
by Lee H. Goldberg
Since my daughter Anwyn's current passion is horses, I'd decided we'd have a carousel-themed cake with toy horses as decorations for her 11th birthday. When I wrote about the edible four-hole mini-golf course I constructed for her 10th birthday (see my July 2006 editorial), I swore that this year's cake would include mechanical actuators or at least some flashing LEDs in its construction. When I started planning the cake back in January I'd even gone as far as starting to play with our Lego Mindstorm set to see if I could construct a mechanism that would pop a carousel-like tier of the cake off of its base layer and slowly spin it around.
Unfortunately, my techno-culinary R&D efforts were thwarted by a busier-than-usual Spring travel schedule which kept me on the road a good part of June and brought me back home the day before Anwyn's birthday party. But despite having less than 24 hours to pull it together, this year's extreme birthday cake turned out as nicely as it did thanks in equal parts to some panic-inspired last-minute improvisations and the generous assistance of my wife, Catherine.
Like any seasoned project manager facing an impending deadline, I de-scoped the project to fit the available schedule and settled on constructing a stationary, carousel-shaped cake. To achieve a suitably-shaped creation, we decided to take a traditional round two-layer cake and top it with a canopy-shaped third layer separated by the little pillars favored by tiered wedding cakes. Some creatively-applied home-made icing, a handful of star-shaped candy confetti and five appropriately-scaled toy horses were all it took to transform the raw cake into a brightly-colored equine fantasy.
Since I was going to be arriving less than a day before the party, Catherine graciously volunteered to bake the cakes and have them ready for me to assemble and decorate. To support the weight of the whole assembly, we'd need a firmer cake than the scrumptious but soft Texas sheet cake I normally bake. After a bit of research, we settled on a slightly modified version of the chocolate cake recipe on the back of the Hershey's Cocoa box. By using about a quarter cup less liquid, I was able to get a firmer texture that would support the heavy upper tier without compromising the texture too much. The one extravagance I allowed myself was taking the time to make home-cooked frosting rather than use the sturdy but somewhat tasteless professional box mix from Wilton I'd used for the past couple of years. Although it was a bit intimidating at first glance, I had great success with the cooked buttercream recipe from the Joy of Cooking cookbook but the recipe I just found on the Cooking for Engineers web site gives even better directions and pictures that should make it even easier to produce a creamy, buttery frosting that that's infinitely nicer than any commercial product.
We originally intended to make the truncated
cone of the carousel canopy by baking a cylindrical cake and using a wire
knife to trim it to shape. Thankfully, Catherine came up with an appropriately-shaped
Pyrex bowl that provided a nearly-ideal mold, complete with fluted edges
(see Fig. 1) that gave the
finished canopy just the right look.
The engineering required to support the 1.5-pound
canopy above the carousel floor was simplified by a quick stop at the cake
decorating department of our local crafts store. It only took a few minutes
to locate an inexpensive set of 5 inch stand-off pillars that locked into a matching pair of cake plates. Once the cake was iced and decorated with
the star sprinkles, we placed the five toy horses on the cake.
Since the horses were intended to double as party favors, we spent a little
more (still less than $5 each) and got some really nice ones from Breyer, a company renowned
for their horse-themed collectables. As luck would have it, the 3 inch figures
in their smaller Stablemates series were just the right size to fit on
our cake (see Fig. 2).
Looking at the gaudy final product of our labors,
one could almost hear the carousel organ pumping out a cheerful tune over
the shrieks of delighted children. There were also lots of real shrieks
of delight from Anwyn and her friends when the cake finally arrived at the
table. It was great to see the kids tear into the cake I'd worked so hard
to build, especially when several of them said that it tasted better than
the other birthday cakes they'd had recently. I'm not sure if it's my ego
talking or if they really did notice the wonderful difference in flavor
a home-made cake has over store-bought or mix-based products, but the clean
plates they left at the table certainly indicate we did something right.
Comments? Questions? Ideas for next year's Extreme Cake? Write me at lhg at en-genius.net or post your comments on our new on-page blog at EN-Genius Network..
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