My girlfriend was a huge fan of Star Trek, so I set out to make a designer cake that looked like the One Sheet for Star Trek III:The Search For Spock. This was a crude line drawing of Mr Spock with simple lines for all the facial features. I got a book by Wilton from the library and looked at the pictures and thought this will be a snap.
Fondue has a mind of its own, in my experience, and I could not get the color or texture exactly right. The cake ended up sort of looking like how I wanted it to look, and considering it was my first effort, it tasted pretty good as well. But it was not perfect. At the time I following the same credo that many others follow-If It Can’t Be Mastered in Fifteen Minutes I Don’t Want To Do It.
Twenty-odd years later I am a little more laid back. I still like the look of those way-out funky cakes that find their way onto the Food Network Challenge shows. But watching those professional chefs struggle for several hours and still not get it done reminds me that maybe I am more of a Hostess Cupcake kind of man.
Confetti Cakes by Elisa Strauss is a book filled with beautiful images and clear and simple directions. The Confetti Cakes Cookbook tells you how to make pretty and elegant cookies, mini-cakes, cupcakes, and cakes. There are cookies that look like orange slices or stiletto heeled shoes. Cupcakes with the look and texture of basketballs or snowmen. Mini cakes that are smaller versions of classic wedding cakes or bags of popcorn. Then there are the regular cakes that are shaped like handbags, Chinese Take-out, and Sushi Bars. The Confetti Cakes photos can be a bit misleading though. For example, the Handbag on the cover is about a foot and half tall, including the handle and a foot or so wide at the base. That’s a pretty big Confetti Cake. Might want to start off with a few cupcakes first.
The Confetti Cakes website is filled with more cool pictures of cakes that are out of this world. The Questions section has this to say about the Cost of a Confetti Cake-Because of the care we give to each order we must require a minimum of $1000 on all of our cakes. In general our pricing ranges from $10-$20 per serving. Hmm, maybe I should have tried harder to get into Culinary School and became a Pastry Chef after all. Or at the very least, I could try out a couple of the recipes in the Confetti Cake Cookbook.
