Stormtrooper Cake

This is a cake. Let me say that again. It’s a cake! A life-sized, totally realistic, and yes edible Stormtrooper cake. And it looks better than a lot of the Stormtrooper costumes I’ve seen.

I’m a big fan of Charm City Cakes in Baltimore, thanks to their dearly-departed (and surprisingly geek-friendly) TV show on the Food Network, Ace of Cakes. (Its final season aired last year, and I am indeed still bitter.) Their incredible, realistic or stylized cakes are always amazing. But they’ve got some serious competition in the form of Amanda Oakleaf Cakes, of Winthrop, Massachusetts.

Oakleaf baked and built this remarkable cake for a scifi convention earlier this month. It weighed more than 300 pounds, stood 6′ 4″ tall, and had enough cake to feed 600 people. It took ten people almost two weeks to plan, build the wire-and-metal frame, and finally fill the frame with cake (which was done just two days before it was to be eaten). The frame was filled entirely with cake, except for the lower legs, which were filled with Rice Krispie Treats.

Can you imagine?! Just… wow.

I’ve seen enough cooking shows to know that fondant — the sugar dough used to cover cakes these days with smoother, cleaner lines than frosting — does not like sticking to vertical surfaces. It’s much heavier than frosting, and doesn’t have any inherent stickiness. Oakleaf says on their blog (where you can see lots more photos of their process) that they “had to invent completely new cake making methods so it could be put together modularly onsite and hold its fondant over long vertical stretches.” I absolutely believe it. There’s simply no way traditional cake-making methods would work for a dessert of this size.

Though it’s certainly their biggest and most elaborate cake, it’s hardly Oakleaf’s first geek-friendly creation. Take a look at their website to see more awesomely geeky treats.

Kudos to Oakleaf Cakes for raising the bar for geeky desserts! Charm City, you’ve been called out.

Stormtrooper Cake: building the helmet

Stormtrooper Cake: filling the frame with cake (life-size photo reference is at left)

It just follows that an Angry Birds cake should be in the picture as well. In fact, you will see Angry Birds cakes all over the Internet. A simple search will give you tons of results – from videos to images to tutorials! No doubt that there are lots of awesome creations out there, but this simple Angry Birds cake made my weekend.

Angry Birds Cake

It was my little brother’s 11th birthday yesterday, and since he currently is into football (the kind that you play with your feet) and he loves playing Angry Birds, I thought it would be nice to mix the two themes. I was lucky enough to have seen some pictures of a friend from college on Facebook. As it turns out, she now makes specialty cakes on the side. I told her about the themes and left everything to her. The result was one cool-looking Angry Birds cake. Here’s the view from the top. I just love that slingshot!

Angry Birds Cake from the Top

I also like the fact that the pig is placed on a “wooden” structure.

Angry Pig

Now these babies were the most wanted things during the party. I totally understood those kids, though.

Angry Birds on the Pitch

Oh, yeah, the birthday boy loved the cake as well. I think it was his “Wow!” that actually made my weekend, not really the Angry Birds cake. ;)

Binary Wedding Cake

Obviously, this wedding cake was made for a geek couple. If you think those 1s and 0s were placed randomly, think again. The sequence is supposed to be code – a message for each other. Since we can’t really see the entire cake in the photo, we can only guess what geeky sloppiness the numbers stand for.

Binary Tote Bag

Using eco-friendly canvas bags is the all the rage these days. I actually just did some grocery shopping the other day and had to get one of those supermarket ones. If you want a cool tote bag, though, this one will do the trick. Oh, and yes, the code translates to characters…guess what? Get the tote bag at Etsy.

Binary Code Shirt

Of course there has to be at least one t-shirt in this list! This Binary Code Shirt, obviously, spells something out in binary code. Can you read it? If you can’t, please don’t wear the shirt. You’ll just end up embarrassing yourself. If you can, then head on over to Curious Inkling for your own.

Thumbs Up Binary Clock

Here’s the good news: this clock actually exists. You can buy it on Amazon. Here’s the bad news: it’s out of stock. Still, this clock deserves to be mentioned. Not only is the concept cool – do some addition in binary to come up with the time – but it actually does look good in my opinion.

Binary vs. Friends Pin

We all know about the t-shirt “There are only 10 types of people in this world…”, don’t we? Here is a pin from Zazzle that adds a twist. Now don’t tell me that didn’t make you laugh! Get the pin for only $5.95.

Binary Finger

There are binary shirts, and there are binary shirts – if you know what I mean. How about learning how to count in binary rather easily? Now doesn’t that shirt remind you of a certain video? Get this shirt for $16.99 at ThinkGeek.

Binary Onesie

You’ve got to start them young, don’t you? What better way to do that with your baby (or niece or nephew, or whatever) than to get one of these onesies? I have to say that this is one of the best binary accessories I have seen so far. CafePress Australia has them for AUD 16.00.

So I ran across this blog called Do It Myself, and saw a really old post featuring a Melting Head Cake. Old it may be, but I am sufficiently disturbed to share this with you. Also, Halloween may be almost a year away, but why not start the year with a little stomach-turning dessert?

The cake is the brainchild of Barbara Jo, who has a passion for making “ridiculous edible art” and trust me, this piece of work is just that – ridiculous and edible! Her concept? Make a severed head cake (not that novel, actually) that melts as the clock ticks away (now that is interesting). The disgustingly awesome thing about the cake is that the melting flesh looks so life-like – down to the skull that becomes exposed in the end! I swear, I do not have the stomach to even try a piece of this cake, no matter how good it may taste.

Enough yakking – I need to finish this post and forget about the images so that I can get my appetite back for dinner. Take a look at the photos below and tell me that they aren’t brilliant! They may not be cute as the cupcakes we normally write about, but they do catch one’s eyes, don’t they?

More pictures and cakes in Two Parts Sugar’s flickr account.

When a woman in New Jersey ordered a birthday cake from a Wegman’s supermarket, she used the option to print a custom message on the cake. All she had to do was send an email. Easy you would have thought, and it was. But the super machine, AKA computer had more problems with the cake and could not interpret Italian, in which part of the message was written. Instead a series of error messages showed up on the cake.

I bet Sheldon would love one of these cakes for his birthday and am sure Think Geek will soon offer cake too!