Sunday, January 23, 2011

Coast of Maine Bird Watching Cake


The coast of Maine has always been my favorite place to visit. Imagine how delighted I was when I was approached to create a cake for a man wishing to give his wife a gift that she would never forget. He arrived with his daughter and a handful of pictures of birds. The birds were the birds that his wife loved watching when they were at Acadia National Park in Maine. He described the meadows, the beach and the shoreline as I remembered them and his wish to recreate this wonderful scene of Maine.

The birds were made from rice crispy treats covered in royal icing. The feathers and rest of the parts of the birds were made from a gumpaste/fondant mixture and the legs were skewers covered in the gumpaste. The top tier represented a post on a dock with a rope tied around it. The second tier represented a stormy day, third tier a meadow and the bottom tier was the beach on a sunny day. I didn't want to take anything away from the main focus of the cake (which were the birds) so I used non-toxic chalk to draw the backgrounds on the cake rather than using any fondant. The sand was brown sugar, the stones from candy shaped to look like rocks from the coast of Maine and the shells from chocolate.

The cake was beautiful and his wife could not have been more surprised. This truly is my favorite cake.