Baking 911

As I was anticipating a (somewhat) relaxing weekend working around my house, I received a frantic message Thursday night that my good friend Myra was in need of baking help. She was attempting to make a groom's cake for her stepson, who was getting married THAT Saturday! Her stepson is a firefighter and wanted a burning building groom's cake. So my Saturday evolved into driving over to her house early that morning and working frantically to complete the cake before they needed to be at the wedding for pictures.

Poor Myra worked on the cake all night Friday and into the wee hours of the morning. By the time I arrived, she had baked 2 tiers of chocolate cake and had coated them with a base of brick-colored peanut butter flavored icing.

We attempted to smooth the icing using my tried and true trick of waxed paper, but this icing was much softer than normal, and stuck to the waxed paper... So we re-iced the two tiers and tried to get it as smooth as possible with the spatula.

Next, we needed a brick pattern for the sides of the building. Myra had bought a brick imprint mat, but again because the icing was super soft, it didn't work as planned. Plan B involved her husband Ken carving a brick pattern into the icing by hand using the icing spatula and a knife.

Myra created the windows for the building out of sugar paper and edible markers. She drew the window grids and cut them out of the sugar paper. (Her dogs also discovered that sugar paper is very tasty during this process!)

While Myra and Ken worked on the bricks and windows, I set out to cut fire from fondant. Using a paring knife and red and yellow fondant, I made as many flames as I could in the time we had.

Then it came time to stack the cake tiers... which I had never done before. Myra was feeling a bit rusty on this step too, so we consulted a book that she had. Ken trimmed 5 cake dowels to length, and we inserted them into the bottom tier in an X pattern. Then Ken used an exacto knife to trim the cake board of the top tier so that it didn't stick out beyond the cake. They very carefully set the top tier on the bottom tier. There was still some space between the 2 tiers, so I piped 2 rows of icing using Wilton tip 12. (This building had some interesting architecture.)

We then completed the details around the building. We used silver, black, and gray sprinkles to create gravel on the roofs of both levels. I mixed some green icing and used Wilton tip 233 to make grass around the bottom of the building. Myra added her sugar paper windows, and I put on the fondant flames.

We then used some black Wilton spray color to create a charred appearance on the outside of the building. We had to be careful with this - not only the strong smell - but we couldn't get any on the windows. We made that mistake with one, and the ink ran. We had to do that one over again.

For the final touches, we added some decorations Myra had bought - firefighters, ladders, and trucks to complete the burning building scene.

We were very pleased with our finished product. If you look closely, I know you could spot some flaws. But considering the short timeline we had - I was only at her house for a little over 4 (frantic) hours to decorate - we finished well beyond my expectations. And those who were at the reception reported that the groom was very pleased - which was our biggest goal.