cake & fondant 13 Jun 2010 03:53 pm
UNDERSTANDING CAKE – birthday cake for Scott McCloud
Comics and cake. Two things I love. So when I was asked to make a SURPRISE birthday cake for Scott McCloud, author of “UNDERSTANDING COMICS,” I was excited and also totally freaked. I did not want to screw this up.
The request was for a “simple looking frosted-chocolate cake.” The recipe? Well, that’s my secret. Sorry folks, I don’t post ALL my recipes.
The cake was to say, “UNDERSTANDING FIFTY” – as it was his fiftieth birthday and it was a play on “UNDERSTANDING COMICS,” of course. The rest of the cake was to have an image off of his follow-up book, Reinventing Comics
I started out as I do with all my baking requests, by thumbnail sketching out ideas and drawing the layout by hand. Then I move to the computer and lay it out in ‘life size’ form.
For the lettering I rolled out white fondant, then lay the cut out ‘template’ that I printed and cut, over the fondant.
Once the letters were cut out, I pulled the template off…
…and now pay attention, here’s where my very expensive Architecture degree pays off : using an x-acto I cut out the lettering by hand, shaping each letter on its own. (Fondant lettering technique how-to, here.)
When it came to the hand + quill image, well – I just hand piped it. A good idea would have been to practice first, but I just went for it on a wing and a prayer. Probably a bad idea looking back, but it went quickly and smoothly, thank goodness. Sometimes stupidity works in your favor.
While this cake looks simple I assure you, the simplest things take a lot of planning. Hopefully everyone at the party enjoyed the cake – but really, can you ever go wrong with chocolate??!!
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on 13 Jun 2010 at 4:36 pm 1.Our Man Horn said …
You’re unbelievable.
AOWW!!
on 13 Jun 2010 at 4:39 pm 2.Our Man Horn said …
Well, there were supposed to be little coding brackets like this {andrewdiceclay} AOWW! {/andrewdiceclay} but Blogger thought it was real coding. >sigh<
on 13 Jun 2010 at 4:46 pm 3.Scott McCloud said …
As delicious as it was beautiful!!
Thanks for creating such a great cake. ^__^
on 13 Jun 2010 at 5:03 pm 4.Eden said …
Awesome.
on 13 Jun 2010 at 5:37 pm 5.jami said …
Looks great! The simple things are quite often hardest, I agree!
on 13 Jun 2010 at 5:39 pm 6.josh said …
Ok, this is just a weird merging of worlds. I’m a huge fan of both of you!
on 14 Jun 2010 at 8:32 am 7.LizAnderson said …
Stupidity For The Win!
It’s a lovely cake. Cheers to your abilities.
on 14 Jun 2010 at 9:00 am 8.Lorena said …
I’m agreeing with Josh — it’s like a “when worlds collide” thing for me. Big fan of both of you and so glad to see comics and cake come together in truly delicious style. Yum!
on 14 Jun 2010 at 1:06 pm 9.Kurt Busiek said …
The cake was delicious, as well as gorgeous!
kdb
on 14 Jun 2010 at 1:10 pm 10.Kris Straub said …
Does it come with infinite frosting? Or microsprinkles?
on 14 Jun 2010 at 1:33 pm 11.Rick Griffin said …
The cake originated in pre-historic times; a caveman’s options were survival, reproduction, or cake. Proto-cake was more like mud however, and was refined as time went on into various disciplines of sweet-making. The combination of cake and frosting was considered for a long time to be uncouth and not befitting the professional chef, although we can plainly see frosting-like elements in many periods of cake history. Calling it frosting is certainly not going to impress a culinary connoisseur, however!
on 14 Jun 2010 at 7:34 pm 12.shannon abdollmohammadi said …
Totally amazing with a capital A.