Ok, I’ll admit, this cake is a little outside of the box, even for me!  But one does occasionally get tired of baking and decorating cupcakes and yearns to use her engineering background to really “construct” a cake!

Actually, the kids needed a cake for a cake competition at school, so I took advantage of yet another Snow Day (and a great blog site) and we made this together.  After much discussion amongst my youngsters about whether to do a football-themed cake (and which team), a princess cake, a mermaid cake, blah, blah, blah….I made the command decision, called them all into the kitchen and said “we’re going to make THIS one–together.”

In case you’re wondering, the stack of “pancakes” is actually a 6″ diameter chocolate cake with strips of ivory colored fondant wrapped around it and painted with watered-down food coloring to look like pancakes.  There is one big fondant pancake on top.   (Amazing how much fondant and food coloring look like pancakes, huh?)  The chocolate sauce bottle is held up on a balloon stick bent at 45-degrees and covered with more brown fondant to look like chocolate syrup, with more brown fondant “dripping” down the sides.  The butter is made from softened starburst and laffy taffy candies.   The base cake is a 10-inch square layer cake covered with fondant to look like a table cloth.  If you’re wondering where I got this idea, I must credit Ann Reardon of “How to Cook That,” a great baking blog site….she makes everything look so easy!

The kids did get into it and helped me bake the cakes and make and color the fondant (their favorite treat).  We all attempted to model a fork out of fondant (and picked the best one to be on the cake) and my little painter girl helped paint the pancake layers.  It really did come out great and seems amazing if you don’t know how it’s done.  The kids (and parents) at school really got a kick out of it.  So very whimsical!

Don’t know if I’ll make it again (unless someone wants a wacky birthday cake or something), but it was a kick to put it all together and see the final results…And it was nice to finally get to use my degree!