The Guest Blogger is back again today. It's Mandi, and her comments are in red.
This year for Dan’s big day I decided to get him the camera
he’s been wanting. He’s usually
annoyingly good at guessing my presents but with this one I don’t think he
expected it at all which is fun.
Probably because it’s way more than we usually spend on each other for
birthdays… but I knew he really wanted it and truthfully I’m just sick of
hearing him moan about his crappy quality pictures for the blog! Anyway, so once I sorted out the actual
camera it was time to conquer the cake…
For prep the night before I baked four cakes; two chocolate,
one vanilla, and one pound cake. This
gives them plenty of time to cool. Only
the pound cake was for the actual camera part of the cake the others were for
the base because I figured one cake wouldn’t be enough for everyone. As I’ve mentioned before… I am NOT a baker…
hence the ever-ready boxed cakes being mixed up by Bonnie. I use pound cake for the camera part because
I’ve found that it seems to keep its shape much better.
I cut the pound cake into thirds and stacked them on top of
each other. Then I covered it all with
frosting and fondant I dyed black. I
found that by putting a thicker layer of chocolate frosting underneath and
rolling the fondant out very thin, it actually tasted much better than usual
and people really seemed to like it (usually I’ve found people tend to remove
the fondant and toss).
A word of warning: when dying fondant black, wear gloves!!!
My hands were purple for hours! I pretty
much had to scrub the top layer of my skin off to get the color out. But then they were red…
To do the lens part of the camera I cut 3 circles out with
the cup and again, covered with frosting and fondant.
I placed some little scraps together for the side part and
top area to make the shape more similar to the actual camera. The process of getting it to look
camera-shaped took WAYYY longer than I had expected!!! So be sure to leave time…
And then the three cakes I had baked for the base collapsed
from the weight and I stuffed them into a bake pan and slathered with vanilla
frosting. Meh… I’m sure people will eat
it anyway…
Gareth helped… what a nice boy…
Now since of course I had left the cake assembly until the
very last minute (as I tend to do) I ran out of time before I could finish all
my details. I had wanted to put all the
little intricacies of the camera on like all the buttons etc. All I had time to do was the logo, the shoot
button, and the back screen! I was kinda
sad that I didn’t have more time because the decorating is my favorite
part! But alas, it was time to get ready
for birthday dinner… I guess if I do this one ever again I should leave more
than just a couple hours for assembly!
I wanted a picture of food from the blog on the lens and
this one seemed to have the best contrast. And it gave me an excuse to see this
cute little guy again! I put it under a
piece of wax paper to make it look more screen-like.
Unfortunately by the time we ate the cake, we were all quite
a few drinks into the evening and didn’t really get any pics of us all enjoying
it… but it was a good night, a fun cake and I’m pretty sure Dan liked his cake
and his present…
Some sites I found on my search for inspiration:
http://mycakes.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/camera-cake/
http://www.coolest-birthday-cakes.com/birthday-cake-design-ideas.html
http://frederickvan.com/blog/2007/09/03/canon-camera-cake/
http://mamamickis.com/index.php?option=com_gallery2&Itemid=43&g2_itemId=175