Making cake for oneself or loved ones is an ethereal, slow, rainy Sunday kind of thing to do. Making cake for other people – that’s a whole other kind of cake – a high amount of pressure combined with shortened time frames and the all-important and often overlooked Delivery.  I’ve made a few cakes -crazy all-nighters, wedding cakes, and those that didn’t make it to the blog that simply didn’t work. I’m not sure the stakes were ever (in my head) as high as this Canon EOS 1DX cake I made last December.  This was another commissioned cake from the CEO of my company, destined for a family member, who is a world-renowned photographer for an International news agency.

Well, I’d be the first to say that no matter who you are, we all put our pants on one leg at a time. And no matter what else, a Cake Of Some Importance needs to start with – cake. Good ingredients, mixed with care.  At the end of the day, this is the same recipe I’d make for my family, and I saw Pete’s cake for his brother no differently.

I did a little research, found out that the Canon EOS 1DX camera was the latest bit of technology Mike used and wrote about, for the London Olympics. There were lots of images of it – no shortage of informative Canon sites out there!

I also spent a little time sweating over whether my so-called research online regarding this dude was accurate, because lord knows I would not want to offend a life-long Nikon lover with a Canon camera cake, or vice-versa. I have a few near and dear to me who have sworn allegiance to one or the other, and I know that is dangerous territory.

The Camera bag was constructed out of cake, covered with marshmallow fondant, and yes, at least one entire bottle of black food colouring went into making all that black fondant, and the woman who helps me try to keep my house in order was horrified with my countertops afterwards as it looked like I had slain an inky octopus or something equally unexplainable.

The camera itself I molded entirely out of marshmallow fondant – and it weighed a ton, so it was great to have the camera bag to put it on, as I felt the whole cake worked better once it was assembled.

If you made it this far in this post, and you’re a Canon-ophile, you’ll already have picked out the one glaring “artistic license” I had was compelled to take. The lens is, not, accurate. But I hope I will be forgiven by those Canonophiles who will appreciate the effort – let’s leave it at that. If Canon asks for a re-do, I’m sure I’ll be able to provide a more accurate rendition.

The photo that I painted, of the silhouetted skateboarder, is a copy of the original picture taken by Mike Blake, and to see it and his blog, click here:  http://blogs.reuters.com/mike-blake/

And while I didn’t get to meet Mike, my boss was happy, which is all that matters at the end of the day. I guess the irony is that most of these pictures were taken with my crappy Android phone.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 30,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 7 Film Festivals

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My birthday was in early November, and we had a dessert party to celebrate. When I asked my children what theme of cake I should make (me), they insisted on Wonder Woman. I have always loved Wonder Woman – if you read her back story and history, she’s a pretty kick-ass role model for women. She’s strong, true, good and powerful, and don’t even get me started on her invisible jet!  Arguably the coolest transportation ever conceived for a comic book hero.

I don’t have girls, but if I did, I’d be pushing the Wonder Woman agenda over the Disney princess stable. Seriously – there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be a princess when you’re a wee girl, but there’s also something to be gained by a little takin’ out the trash too. Wonder Woman is a role model that is at once beautiful,  strong, and can kick serious butt, and that’s good for girls. Heck – good for any age. When I was a kid, I used to watch Lynda Carter in the 70′s  TV series The New Adventures of Wonder Woman – and she was everything I wanted to be when I grew up.

Even more, I love the fact that I had convinced my kids, for just a while, that I was Wonder Woman. And it’s still a mystery as to why we’ve never been seen in the same room together. Hmm. Interesting.

Can you believe I made this?  My kids think they’re hilarious!!! And I’m really pleased with the way they turned out. I ended up using Pebeo ceramic paint for the red – painted over top of the clear glaze, then doused the whole thing in a healthy drenching of ruby coloured sparkle. I expect I’ll need to find some sort of adhesive spray for this, otherwise I’ll be sweeping up red sparkles for the rest of my life!

Thank goodness I had a couple of spiderweb cookies lying around!!

The first step was to establish the cartoons to duplicate. They were colour copied on a photocopier from the Tintin books.

Second step was to roll and cut out the fondant to the shape of the cartoon cell.

Then I started sketching the outlines of the cells, and the cartoon itself. 

I guess looking back, it’s kind of a crazy process – and before you say it, I am definitely AWARE that I could have printed these cartoons onto edible rice paper.  I know that option exists, so if painting miniscule cartoons onto fondant is not your thing, by all means, contact a local bakery and see what they can do for you.

Here’s another couple of cells. First the sketched outline of all the main characters.

Add in some colour – lightest colours to darkest.

Once all the colouring is mostly done, I go back over the outlines to make them pop a bit more. 

The final product was actually a couple of months of work – because fondant doesn’t go bad, I could store it easily, out of sunlight of course, and it was completely fine. It was nice to take the time to do it right.