Cake Wars 2008

Hello all. A little over a week ago Jon (my little brother) & I celebrated our birthdays together with a little get-together at my house. During the planning I asked Jon if he was making me a cake and he said "Sure. Are you making mine?" Of course I agreed and soon the cake wars were born. It's just more exciting to make it a competition. We figured that everyone at the party could vote on the best cake... using the categories of taste, appearance, technique, and adherence to the theme. The theme, by the way, was to embody the birthday boys (or girls) personality in cake form. Unbeknown to each other, we both started doing research on techniques on the internet and I even checked out all the books on cake decorating from the library.

Here is what we ended up with:

CAKE A: "SPOONS"

Jon made me a cake with a 3-D spoon on top of a rectangular sheet cake with playing cards & chocolate on it. He made homemade pound cake & fondant to carve & then cover the spoon. The cake was a traditional yellow cake with white frosting & chocolate bits everywhere. The spoon, by the way, comes from a story from my youth where I nearly killed my father during a game of "spoons" after leaping through a circle of bystanders, tackling my dad to the ground, and wrenching the last spoon out of his rather strong grip. Apparently this reminds Jon of my competitive nature!

Here are the detail shots:

Birds eye view of my cake.
(Notice the detail on the handle? Nice!)

The Amazing 3-D spoon.
(Excellent carving technique)

CAKE B: "MARLEY & ME"

For Jon's cake I went with a music/Bob Marley theme since he is musical AND since he is very, um, supportive of the Rastafarian movement (he's even WEARING a Rasta bracelet in the photo above). I did a 2 layer cake (both made of chocolate with cookies & cream filling) and iced it in homemade Italian buttercream dyed in the traditional Rastafarian colors. I made a portrait of Marley out of colored chocolate and covered the rest of the cake in chocolate music notes and chocolate guitars.

Here are the detail shots:

My Marley Masterpiece.
(It turned out even better than I expected)

Guitars & Music Notes
(Check out that craftsmanship)

P.S. I won.