The baking of an American President
I actually made this cake for an election night party, but I'm posting it now in honor of the inauguration.
Now, first off, I'll admit, it took me awhile to drink the Obama kool-aid. He was my pick to win from day one (I was 99% sure...I would have bet money on it), but I was actually supporting Giuliani, who I knew didn't have a snowball's chance in hell. I wanted to support John McCain, since I wanted the republicans to start moving to the center again, but his campaign was so badly run (and since Obama was an ace in the hole anyway), there didn't seem much point in it. Also, I finally just succumbed to the irresistible pull of Obama's charisma and air of cool-headed intelligence and went Obama-happy with everyone else. And how do I express support? By making a cake.
Step 1: I made a sheet cake and put it on a festive platter. I would like to make clear that I am not a cake decorator and never really decorate cakes. This was an ambitious and risky proposition.
Step 2: I found a nice, symmetrical picture of Obama to use as a reference. I thought about making some kind of plan or stencil or something, but then decided that if I was going to fail, I wanted to fail in some epic way worthy of cakewrecks.com so I figured I would go ahead and freehand this bad boy.
That's right... I made Obama's skin tone by mixing chocolate and vanilla frosting. l went there.
I tried to mix up the other colors for the american flag background, but no amount of red food coloring was making that frosting anything other than pink.
I started off applying the frosting to the cake with a small spatula, which made me realize quickly that the American flag was not going to have 13 stripes. I decided to claim this as "poetic license."
Eventually I abandoned the spatula in favor of using my fingers.
I was going to do my outline details in a darker chocolate frosting that I was going to squeeze out of a bag with a little hole cut in it for precision.
It started off not going so well and I was regretting the decision to draw freehand.
I managed to get things somewhat under control, but I realized that his head was not elongated enough and I hoped I could pull it off without it turning into an Alfonso Ribiero cake.
In the end, it was passable, and a party hit. Ilise brought over an Obama pie to add to the baked-goods-for-change bandwagon.
Now, first off, I'll admit, it took me awhile to drink the Obama kool-aid. He was my pick to win from day one (I was 99% sure...I would have bet money on it), but I was actually supporting Giuliani, who I knew didn't have a snowball's chance in hell. I wanted to support John McCain, since I wanted the republicans to start moving to the center again, but his campaign was so badly run (and since Obama was an ace in the hole anyway), there didn't seem much point in it. Also, I finally just succumbed to the irresistible pull of Obama's charisma and air of cool-headed intelligence and went Obama-happy with everyone else. And how do I express support? By making a cake.
Step 1: I made a sheet cake and put it on a festive platter. I would like to make clear that I am not a cake decorator and never really decorate cakes. This was an ambitious and risky proposition.
Step 2: I found a nice, symmetrical picture of Obama to use as a reference. I thought about making some kind of plan or stencil or something, but then decided that if I was going to fail, I wanted to fail in some epic way worthy of cakewrecks.com so I figured I would go ahead and freehand this bad boy.
That's right... I made Obama's skin tone by mixing chocolate and vanilla frosting. l went there.
I tried to mix up the other colors for the american flag background, but no amount of red food coloring was making that frosting anything other than pink.
I started off applying the frosting to the cake with a small spatula, which made me realize quickly that the American flag was not going to have 13 stripes. I decided to claim this as "poetic license."
Eventually I abandoned the spatula in favor of using my fingers.
I was going to do my outline details in a darker chocolate frosting that I was going to squeeze out of a bag with a little hole cut in it for precision.
It started off not going so well and I was regretting the decision to draw freehand.
I managed to get things somewhat under control, but I realized that his head was not elongated enough and I hoped I could pull it off without it turning into an Alfonso Ribiero cake.
In the end, it was passable, and a party hit. Ilise brought over an Obama pie to add to the baked-goods-for-change bandwagon.