Saturday, June 09, 2007

You Knew Dalai Was Strange...
But this really takes the cake!





A few years ago, when my son was a Cub Scout, our troop held an annual "Dad and Scout" cake contest. The only rules were that moms were not allowed to help, and that all components must be edible (by normal people). My son and I decided to take a rather medical bent, although some would call it macabre. Thus was born the idea of the Scout Patient Cake. The cake itself is red-velvet, nicely simulating tissue. The brain and heart are composed of....marzipan! Yes, Dalai's brain is made of almond paste... The lips are of the classic wax variety, the eyeballs are strips of white "AirHeads" taffy rolled into balls and adorned with frosting. Large vessels are made of strawberry licorice, and coronaries are drawn in with liquid frosting. Now the hospital blue cover was by far the hardest part of this project. This was made from fondant, a thick frosting-like material that you usually see in cakes more like this one from Krista's Creations:


That darn stuff is very hard to work with, which is probably why the cake above goes for $300. I have a feeling ours would not command that price.

Back to the Cub Scouts... prizes were awarded in various categories. Our cake took second place overall. I think perhaps the judges were afraid to award us anything less.

You'll be glad to know that even though the cake went down the dispose-all years ago, I saved the brain and the heart in the freezer, where they remain to this day. You never know when you might need one, right?

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