Cholecystectomy cake

Okay..this cake is pretty funny. This cake was requested by friendly coworkers of a man who was undergoing a cholecystectomy (he had his gallbladder removed) and they asked me to make a cake for the occasion. I never met him and had the idea of making him in the hospital operation style even though the surgery is usually done by laser now. So i asked for a picture of the guy so that I could sculpt him out of chocolate.

I think it pretty much looks like him...what do you think?

This is the first time i ever made a realistic sculpture of anything let alone a person and to do it in modeling chocolate was not too easy but I got it done since I only had a day or two to buy all my supplies, make my fondant, make the modeling chocolate and of course make the cakes and the frosting from scratch.

The actual cake was dark chocolate with peanut butter filling and chocolate icing, covered in home-made marshmallow fondant. Everyone who asks for a cake seems to request this chocolate cake - peanut butter icing combination...I knew it was pretty yummy but it must be really really good.

This poor guy...I don't think that he expected this after his surgery.

And in case you were wondering...his insides are anatomically correct...and edible of course!

Little Mermaid Cake

Okay, Soo...this is what took up most of my time in the month of August. It was a very important DOUBLE 3rd Birthday and the request was for a Little Mermaid Cake!

Here are the beauties; Dani and Nikki in their dancing school costumes!

And in the middle is their big sister Erianna.

One thing that was for sure is after making this cake I wish I had a few things... ...like ALL the supplies and the correct tools and the SPACE to make such a large and heavy four-tiered cake!

While my boyfriend is a great assistant I sure could have used an extra set of hands (that did not eat everything it came in contact with). Andrew is great help but for everyone who knows him he will work for food and if he is working WITH food that means he is eating it too!

So, yea, I would love a team of experienced helpers since I, myself am not really even experienced. I would also sell my first born (have to give an IOU til that baby is born) for that machine that rolls out fondant and other dough because by the time I was finished with making my own fondant and rolling it nice and thin, my entire house was covered in powdered sugar. My living room, coffee table even poor Jackson!

My favorite part of this cake making process was making all the fun little fish and creatures that were hiding all over the cake.

Even Sebastian the crab and Flounder looked pretty good.

The problem with making these characters was the fact that they are made out of home-made modeling chocolate during the HOTTEST week of the entire summer and my apartment is on the top floor of my building and I only have air conditioning in my bedroom. So getting these guys to stay in their shape without turning to liquid was tricky.

I decide the main character, Ariel, would have to be made out of something that would hold up a bit better. I made Ariel out of gumpaste which is slightly less delicious but still edible. It was NOT easy and the whole time i sculpted her i wished I had taken an advanced sculpturing class in college!

The cake had lots of features that I have never actually done before. I poured colored sugar to look like coral and water. I made modeling chocolate. I used gumpaste. I did ALOT of stuff and just "winged" it, googling what I did not know how to do! The sugar pouring was especially difficult since I did not have a candy thermometer, but it all came out great!

It was pretty hard trying to find a board that would hold this super-heavy four tiered, 8layer cake! But eventually I did and turning into a beach scene was fun!

The kiddies really liked the cake and I was soo happy that they recognized right away that it was The Little Mermaid! Phew! Thank Goodness, kids are the toughest critics! When they saw the cake they were pretty excited and picking out their favorite creatures!

That Octopus was very popular and as the cake was being cut lots of kids wanted a piece of the poor guy! I also heard them saying that the sand was real and that they couldn't eat it...but I assured them that absolutely EVERYTHING on this cake is edible!

Here is a shot of the back of the cake. I decorated it even though everyone said "you don't need to decorate the back of the cake...it's like the back of a Christmas Tree" I wouldn't leave it empty of course and I had more than enough stuff to cover it.

While the end result was quite busy, ( I definitely did not edit my design, and at one point I had Andrew and Erica "food-gluing" whatever they wanted wherever they wanted because I was being tooo meticulous and would have spent days with this cake!) so while it was a busy cake it was also fun, and colorful and definitely a kids cake!

Soo, just in case the cake did not taste as good as it looked I made some yummy cupcakes and even yummier truffles.

But while these were sooo good and were gobbled up as quickly as they were put out...the cake was DELICIOUS and it really was eaten up!

The top tier was a confetti style cake with confetti custard in the middle.

The second to the top was a chocolate chip cake with creamy chocolate filling.

The third tier was yellow pudding cake with yellow custard.

The fourth and bottom tier was dark chocolate devil food with oreo cream filling!

All that hard work....but it was delicious and beautiful!

Even these chocolate oysters and pearl are home-made and edible!