Stephanie’s Cakes

Decorating a cake for an artist is a high-pressure job! After all, they’re definitely going to notice the proportion of the design, the symmetry of the lines, the small details. I started out thinking that a cake done in the style of Mondrian - the painter famous for his color-block works - would be relatively easy… until I started to realize that one shaky line or offset rectangle would ruin the entire illusion. Gulp! Thankfully, I made a carefully-measured paper pattern before I started, and with its trusty rectangles in hand, everything came out OK.

Why Mondrian? Gary, our departing art director, used Mondrian-style designs in several of his layouts. It was a natural choice!

The cake was white almond sour cream with raspberry filling; the colored squares are cut out of fondant, and the white background and black lines are buttercream. The “Artist Gary” figurine is made from fondant (the paintbrush, however, is real).

(click to enlarge)

When our managing editor, Kathy, decided it was time to leave for greener pastures, the entire staff wanted to make sure her send-off was extra-special. We ran through lots of cake ideas: Hawaiian luau? A stack of books? A laptop computer with an image of our Web site? But we kept coming back to ideas that featured Kathy’s beloved dogs, Frances and Mickey (Mickey’s the dachshund). I decided this was a good chance to really challenge myself by making 3D versions of the dogs.

So we sneakily borrowed and photocopied Kathy’s dog photos while she was away from her desk, and I came up with a design that incorporated not only our magazine (hanging from Frances’ mouth), but also the giant blue mug that lived on Kathy’s desk - an item that everyone fondly associated with Kathy. After a few experiments, several construction diagrams, a double batch of buttercream, and a big dose of “hope-this-works!” faith, two very obedient cake-dogs showed up for the party.

This was certainly one of my most challenging cake endeavors. Both of the dogs are iced in buttercream; their heads are built on styrofoam bases frosted in buttercream, and their ears are fondant. I decided to use styrofoam for the heads because using real cake would have made them too heavy to stay in place (in the case of Frances - I didn’t have time to build a wooden frame that could support a carved cake head) or too crumbly when carved that small (Mickey). Frances’ front legs are made of iced plastic tubes, but other than that, both dogs’ bodies and paws are cake. I took a little artistic liberty with Mickey’s body length, obviously, but it was used to good effect when the blue mug was placed in the middle!
We ended up not cutting into the dog cakes at the party - there was enough cake in the oval underneath the Frances cake to serve everyone - so Kathy took both of them home, where the real dogs had a chance to pose with their sugary counterparts:

Here’s Frances:

and Mickey:

And here are a few pre-party photos, taken before I added the magazine and blue mug (click to enlarge)

Who’s a good girl, fetching my magazine for me? awwww… now, where did I put those snausages?

This is one of my favorites Made for a departing coworker, Clary, it’s a giant iPod complete with headphones and a little fondant figure of Clary herself. The song titles have all been “tweaked” to include grammar- and journalism-related terms, which is why the first one reads “Comma Chameleon” instead of “Karma Chameleon,” for example. The cake is iced in buttercream, with a silvery fondant strip around the bottom to mimic an iPod’s metallic backplate. The headphones are cake and iced pretzel sticks. Sounds good, eh?

(click on a photo below to enlarge)

How do you say “bon voyage” in cake? This luggage cake is the closest I’ve come (so far). Created for a coworker leaving on a three-month tour of South America, this chocolate-buttercream suitcase features fondant travel stickers of the countries on her itinerary, plus our company logo and a San Francisco badge to remind her of home. The buckles and straps are made from modelling chocolate, which is kind of like a cross between the flavor of a Tootsie Roll and consistency of thick playdough. Edible clay. Mmmm.

(click on a photo below to enlarge it)