2D Finalist 22
The Deep Emery Greer
by Amber Church · submitted Jul 23, 2012 · 2012 contest
1 / 18
Description
There is a tradition of making an elaborate cake for my friend Christina's birthday. Her love of animals of all kinds made me chose this shark grotto design for this year's cake.
I wanted a design that would allow light to come up through the cake, like in the image so that the cake would look amazing in a dark room. I settled on filling the center of the cake with jello to make this happen. I should be clear that I will never be making a cake out of jello again - it was a nightmare.
When I was a little kid I had a castaways themed birthday party. For the party my mom made a desert island cake surrounded by an ocean of blue jello. Although the finished product looked fantastic I remember her swearing up and down that she would never use jello in a cake again because it ate the cake. Assuming that I could learn from her mistakes I decided that I would use a glass container in the cake to separate the jello and cake - successfully avoiding the designs issues involved in using jello - or so I thought.
I made a three layer vanilla cake held together with homemade margarita jam and french vanilla icing that was the same height as the dish the jello would be poured into. I arranged the cake on a cake board that I had cut a hole out of the center of so that I could shine a light into the finished creation for the proper effect. I then pushed the glass dish through the cake so that I could scoop out the center of the cake to fit the glass dish in.
I iced the cake in melted black candy melts both because they were the blackest materials I had on hand and because the birthday girl loves them.
Then came the jello. I wanted to build grotto walls with black licorice. I first tried cementing the licorice in place in the dish with royal icing (the strongest icing I could think of) and then pouring the jello in. The jello ate the icing and I ended up with a bunch of licorice floating on top of slightly milky blue jello.
So then I filled the dish part way full of jello, allowed it to set completely, and poked the licorice into place. I then poured the second layer of jello into the dish - it ate the licorice (are you starting to see a trend here). At this point I gave up on the licorice and instead iced the inside of the cake as well to give the walls some dark texture.
I wanted some sharks to exist at depth in the jello and others to be on the surface with the swimmer. I created the sharks out of rolled black fondant. Assuming that the licorice had dissolved because I poured a liquid layer over the solid layer of jello I decided to work with two solid layers of jello. I allowed two dishes half filled with jello to set. My plan was to put a few sharks on top of one dish of jello and then cover it with the set jello from the second dish. I put the sharks onto the first layer of jello - they dissolved into what looked like an oil slick - I essentially created the Exxon Valdez of cakes.
By this time we had reached the day of Christina's birthday party. I filled one more dish with jello, let it set and put it straight into the cake. With less than half an hour to go I used the tiny bit of black fondant I had left to build a rim around the dish and hide it completely from sight creating a rocky surface to the cake's top. I created a gradient between the cake and jello using some spray on black food colouring. Then five minutes before she walked through the door (to avoid any more issues with dissolving) I placed the sharks and the swimmer on the cake and used a bit of white gel to create the waves from the swimmers kicks. Then I hid the cake in a dark room with a small LED light shining through it.
I would have loved things to look a bit cleaner, but given how the process went I was just thrilled to be able to have the cake ready to go when Christina walked through the door.
The great news is that she absolutely loved it, and it was delicious, so that's all that really matters I guess.
8 boxes of blue jello + 1 extremely frustrated baker = one thrilled birthday girl
I wanted a design that would allow light to come up through the cake, like in the image so that the cake would look amazing in a dark room. I settled on filling the center of the cake with jello to make this happen. I should be clear that I will never be making a cake out of jello again - it was a nightmare.
When I was a little kid I had a castaways themed birthday party. For the party my mom made a desert island cake surrounded by an ocean of blue jello. Although the finished product looked fantastic I remember her swearing up and down that she would never use jello in a cake again because it ate the cake. Assuming that I could learn from her mistakes I decided that I would use a glass container in the cake to separate the jello and cake - successfully avoiding the designs issues involved in using jello - or so I thought.
I made a three layer vanilla cake held together with homemade margarita jam and french vanilla icing that was the same height as the dish the jello would be poured into. I arranged the cake on a cake board that I had cut a hole out of the center of so that I could shine a light into the finished creation for the proper effect. I then pushed the glass dish through the cake so that I could scoop out the center of the cake to fit the glass dish in.
I iced the cake in melted black candy melts both because they were the blackest materials I had on hand and because the birthday girl loves them.
Then came the jello. I wanted to build grotto walls with black licorice. I first tried cementing the licorice in place in the dish with royal icing (the strongest icing I could think of) and then pouring the jello in. The jello ate the icing and I ended up with a bunch of licorice floating on top of slightly milky blue jello.
So then I filled the dish part way full of jello, allowed it to set completely, and poked the licorice into place. I then poured the second layer of jello into the dish - it ate the licorice (are you starting to see a trend here). At this point I gave up on the licorice and instead iced the inside of the cake as well to give the walls some dark texture.
I wanted some sharks to exist at depth in the jello and others to be on the surface with the swimmer. I created the sharks out of rolled black fondant. Assuming that the licorice had dissolved because I poured a liquid layer over the solid layer of jello I decided to work with two solid layers of jello. I allowed two dishes half filled with jello to set. My plan was to put a few sharks on top of one dish of jello and then cover it with the set jello from the second dish. I put the sharks onto the first layer of jello - they dissolved into what looked like an oil slick - I essentially created the Exxon Valdez of cakes.
By this time we had reached the day of Christina's birthday party. I filled one more dish with jello, let it set and put it straight into the cake. With less than half an hour to go I used the tiny bit of black fondant I had left to build a rim around the dish and hide it completely from sight creating a rocky surface to the cake's top. I created a gradient between the cake and jello using some spray on black food colouring. Then five minutes before she walked through the door (to avoid any more issues with dissolving) I placed the sharks and the swimmer on the cake and used a bit of white gel to create the waves from the swimmers kicks. Then I hid the cake in a dark room with a small LED light shining through it.
I would have loved things to look a bit cleaner, but given how the process went I was just thrilled to be able to have the cake ready to go when Christina walked through the door.
The great news is that she absolutely loved it, and it was delicious, so that's all that really matters I guess.
8 boxes of blue jello + 1 extremely frustrated baker = one thrilled birthday girl
