AT-AT Walker Surprise

Let me start by saying that I'm violating one of my basic blogging guidelines by posting this entry. I'm a stickler for sequential blogging but I'm just soooo excited about this cake and there's too many blog items in queue before this one, lol.

Some of you already know that my husband, Dennis, has three great loves in his life. He loves me the most (at least that's what I tell him); he loves Porsches (especially the Porsche 911 Carrera); and he loves Star Wars. More specifically, he loves the old-school episodes IV, V, and VI and even more specifically, he loves Imperial Stormtroopers and AT-AT Walkers. So when it came time to start planning for his birthday in December, I knew immediately that I wanted to make him an AT-AT Walker cake. I had already made him a Stormtrooper cake, a Porsche cake, and a Porsche cookie so I guess I was saving the best and most difficult for last.

Dennis' birthday is on December 26th (which totally sucks eggs, btw) and we usually have a fairly quiet celebration since everyone is either out of town or busy celebrating Christmas with family. This year, however, I decided to throw him a surprise birthday party the friday before his birthday while friends were still in town. All the guests did an amazing job keeping the secret and it's an understatement to say that he was simply surprised walking through the door. I have an awesome video of his reaction but for the sake of my marriage, I dare not post it, lol. It was a bit stressful making the cake in secret but the expression on his face when he saw his AT-AT cake more than justified the 50+ hours I spent slaving over it. Without further ado, here is my dear hubby next to his birthday cake holding my present to him, the LEGO Motorized AT-AT walker he's been denying himself.

It took a few minutes to convince him (and some guests) that the cake needed to be cut and eaten but finally he conceded and stabbed it with the cake cutter.

Inside was a moist almond cake with cream cheese buttercream filling. Yum!!

Making this cake was quite a challenge for me since I usually rely on my husband (who has an engineering background) to build my cake supports. Left to my own resources, I'm delighted to see that I've actually picked up some construction skills of my own :). Below is the basic framework after the underside and legs were decorated.

.....with the cake carved and iced with buttercream.
TIP: When making a scale replica of anything (especially for your engineer husband), it's always helpful to seek out blueprints and enlarge them to the size. Finally, please forgive me as I post too many photos of the this cake - there's just so many interesting angles.
Some close-up shots with better lighting.

Happy Birthday, hubby!!!

P.S. I accidentally left out a few details on the AT-AT but you won't notice unless you're a Star Wars fan. There's not too many of those out there, right?

Lien Sanchez

Crazy Cake Company

http://www.crazycakecompany.com/

Aren't you gonna open that bottle?

So, where were we in the adventures of Kim and Chris? Oh yes, the groom’s cake. Before Kim and I ever sat down to discuss her wedding cake, she stated that the groom’s cake, which was a surprise, MUST be a bottle of Opus One. Her fiancé, Chris, is a wino, uh, I mean a wine enthusiast and Opus One is his absolute favorite wine. What can I say but the man has good taste – after all he is marrying my friend Kim, right? Incidentally, the only time I’ve ever had the pleasure of trying Opus One was at a company retreat at my first job out of college. My boss had decided to splurge on a few bottles for everyone at dinner one night, so I had a glass. I’m actually quite embarrassed to admit that that nice glass of red was completely wasted on me. You see, I was fresh out of college and my tastebuds were still recovering from the years of cheap tequila abuse, and was in no condition to appreciate all the delicate flavors that I’m sure was in that glass. Sad to say but that glass of Opus could’ve been a glass of Two-Buck Chuck and I wouldn’t have known the difference. Yeah, I know, I cringe for the younger me too.

But I digress…….I was given my marching orders for the groom’s cake and so began searching the web for a high res image of the wine label that I would need for my edible image. I couldn’t find any that were adequate for a good print so I went directly to the source and contacted the Opus One winery in Oakville, CA. Jennifer, their PR coordinator, had a high res jpeg in my inbox within the hour, talk about customer service, :-) !

Ok, enough chitchat, I know you guys want to see pictures so let’s start with the cake board. Below is a picture of it scored to resemble planks of wood.
The cakeboard after the color wash. TIP: When using color wahes on fondant, be sure to allow for ample drying time (4-8 hrs).
Next, the wine of bottle. Here is it iced with buttercream.

.....covered with fondant and airbrushed.

Then, the bottle label. So, the original plan was to simply print one out on edible paper and affix it to the wine bottle cake - hence the need for the high res image. Well, as luck would have it, my edible printer (which worked just dandy the week before) decided to throw a fit and only spew out unintelligibly garbled images. About twenty minutes and a few choice words later, I moved on to plan B: piping the label by hand. Talk about nerve-racking, not only did I need to reproduce the silhouettes of Robert Mondavi and Baron Phillipe de Rothschild, I had to reproduce their signatures at the bottom! After roughly an hour of the most painstaking piping I’ve done thus far, I ended up with darn good replica, if I do say so myself =D. I guess all that practice in grade school forging my parents’ signature on permission slips came in handy after all.
And finally, the groom's cake fully assembled in the wood crate with packing straw made of fondant. (I didn't bother with posting pictures of the wood crate cake assembly since it's basically just a rectangle.)
The side view
Closer up view

Me with my cheesy smile next to the cake

I've made a handful of novelty cakes that were a 1:1 scale but this one is by far the most realistic looking.....which proved to be quite interesting throughout evening. It began with the cake setup when several of the catering staff stopped by and asked if the bottle of wine needed to be refrigerated (nevermind that you shouldn't refrigerate reds); and continued during the wedding reception as I overheard a couple of folks wondering why the bride and groom were toasting with red wine instead of champagne; the best, though, was when Chris, the groom, admitted to me that he actually started to reach over to grab bottle before he was promptly told that it was his surprise groom's cake. And unbeknownst to me until recently, the merriment continued on 'til the next day, as evidenced by this excerpt from the bride:

“As for the Opus cake, the caterer didn't know it was a cake either so they didn't serve it. Thank goodness because we had a family get together the next day and Chris and I wanted to share your amazing talent with the rest of the family. They couldn't believe it was a real cake (funny how saying that encourages people to poke at it). It wasn't until we had to cut into the cake were they finally convinced. And even still my aunts kept breaking off the "straws" to prove to themselves that yes, it was edible.”

Yes, it really is funny how telling people "it's a cake" encourages all types of pokage.