WOW! I bet we all have stories to tell on THIS subject! How many subjects for cakes do you think are in this world? I use to think at least 10,000. Now I know there must be 2-3 times that. Is any cake idea impossible? I don't think so. It has sure seemed that way at first, to me, though. Probably this subject goes hand-in-hand with 2 weeks ago: 'biggest cake' chat too.

I love doing these kinds of 'different' cakes. But when the customer first throws the idea at me, it sometimes seems almost impossible. I think my best advise to you would be to NOT make a firm committal right away. It IS fun and a challenge. (Sure a good way to break the 'burnout' we talked about last week) LOL. Once I start looking through old cake books I come up with a 'part' of an idea here and another part there. Mail Box News is a very good place to start looking. Or old Wilton Yearbooks. Then, when you think you have a good cake formed, call the customer back with a firm price.

CAKE 1: One of my most unusual cakes was the wedding cake shaped like a Lamburdini (make of antique car) - 3D. Not sure if that is the correct spelling. It was for around 100 people. They wanted it iced white. I didn't get a picture, but I don't suppose I really need one. I made it in the likeness of other cars I have pictures of on my web site already, except for the headlights and tail lights. I added some flowers around it. I stacked sheet cakes and carved it to shape. TIP: I always ice cut cake first with thinned down icing. This helps seal in the crumbs.

L2jlu2: do you have to make special platform for these cakes
CCChefPwd: L2 - most of these have to have special supports for them. Some have special stands and some just have to have good supports
CCChefDol: I use a sheet cake board with styrofoam block and set the cake (is
on a cardboard same size as the cake) on the styrofoam...It is really 3D
L2jlu2: do you charge them extra for these special stands
CCChefPwd: That is figured into the price of doing these cakes.
CCChefDol: I don't ever use material I need returned. I get the styrofoam at the builder supply ---CHEAP

CAKE 2: 'Pig with an apple in it's mouth' cake. (Picture, click here). I used sheet cakes, a wonder mold cake for the head (on side) and a 7 inch round between for the neck (on side too). I carved the cake until it was in the shape of a pig. Then iced it, used a smooth paper towel for some 'pig wrinkles' and then air brushed it to look very roasted.

L2jlu2: dol I did your pig cake, last year for pig roast for 100 people.  First time attempting anything like that, it was great people couldn't believe it
OnlineHost: MBF821 has left the room.
CCChefDol: L2...you really did??? Great to hear
CCChefDol: Fun when they think it is real huh
Cakecolet: i made a cake Bette Midlers daughter jumped out of
CCChefPwd: It's fun to watch their reactions
CCChefDol: OH NO!...edible???
L2jlu2: how  big was this cake Colette?

CAKE 3: Roller skate-shaped cake. (Picture, click here) This one I actually got money for! ($100.00) Wilton was having a contest before publishing their Celebrate 2 Book. So I sent a picture in and I won 1st place!!! I'll be posting the picture when I send up this chat. It was 3-D roller skates sitting on a sheet cake. I Made the shoe part out of a 6" square cake and the boot part I baked in Campbell soup cans. I used marshmallows for wheels...added pompoms. Wilton redid that cake and in the book it is different and is pictured in the Celebrate 2 book.

L2jlu2: does Wilton still have cake contests?
LGreen3487: how can i enter a cake contest?
CCChefDol: cake contest are at malls...check my web site for any announcements of these

CAKE 4: Sue's Graduation cake. (PICTURE, click here). This was the story of my daughter's life from birth to graduation from high school.  I also sent this picture in for another Wilton contest. This time for Celebrate 6...and won first place and $250.00. They didn't do that one over. I had made 4 gumpaste dolls with a gp stairway and a gp banner which had the words: "You've Come A Long Way Baby". I think re-doing this one would have taken them too long. Pictured in Celebrate 6 on page 73. These books are all sold out and you are very lucky if you ever find a copy.

CAKE 5: Float cake. (Picture, click here) This was for high school home coming....a freebie. They had asked me to make 'just a cake'...of course I couldn't do a simple one LOL. I decided I would make a 'float' since they'd be having floats in their parade. You will see that I made a sheet cake with cake 'steps' and a graduate figure in a lace gazebo and football players on the sheet cake. They had planned on raffling it off during lunch. But they never figured on getting $80.00 for it. They had a hard time counting all the dimes at 10 cents per raffle ticket. A boy won it. He loved it and though it was raining very hard, he took his jacket off to hold over the cake and he said it made it home.

CAKE 6: Cars & trucks. Some are already on my web site and I still have some more ideas I'll be sending up. One is a cake shaped like a van, another shaped like a dump truck, another shaped like a fire truck. These are typical of the way we made cakes before there were shaped pans. You will see that we had quite a challenge sometimes. We had nothing like a pan in the shape-of to help back then.  Click here for a page of car cakes showing you how I set them up and decorate them. There are 3 totally different cakes. OR, click here is a semi truck. More cars and trucks, click here.

CAKE 7: Sewing machine-shaped cake. (Picture, click here). It was for my daughter Sue's birthday. She loved to sew and I made her a sewing machine cut from a sheet cake. The wheel is a 6" cake and the rest is just carved out of a half sheet cake.

MaraTLee: Dee, are they  3-d or 2-d???
CCChefDol: They are 3D...all

CAKE 8: Toilet brush cake (Picture, click here)....Typical of the odd requests! It was for a lady who worked as a maid. The customer brought me a real toilet brush to go by. I used a petite doll pan for the bottom brush part since the brush was round. Then I used the #233 grass tip. Easy really. On this subject...I have never done it, but is very popular. ...a toilet bowl cake..."flushing down your birthdays" etc. They use a wonder mold cake (upright) and a square cake for the back turned on-side. They hollow out the 'toilet and add blue 'water' than spread on piping gel.

ShariE1071: why would ppl want to eat a cake that looks like a toilet brush???
CCChefPwd: Doesn't sound appetizing does it.  A little to much flavor for me LOL
CCChefDol: It was a sheet cake ...and it didn't look bad at all...just a round white brush - not MY idea LOL
CCChefPwd: (Toilet Bowl Cake) We used to do these all the time.  Even had a special base built
for them. They were very popular at the time and we did lots of them. I had forgotten about those
CCChefDol: ...remember the toilet Roland made with the little boy stepping on the tooth paste - at ICES

CAKE 9: A BIG wedding cake that took forever! (Picture, click here). Then I had to drive 2 1/2 hours to deliver it besides. There is no use to really try to describe it here. But it had a fountain with 16-12-8-6" cakes above with 12-8 cakes on each side and 2- 8" cakes in front with stairways leading all around. I stood up a royal icing heart between the bottom 2 center cakes...made the 2 1/2 hours drive standing up too! I also used my curved icing hearts. (Patterns in my wedding cake book with directions. They are simple lattice made on the medium flower formers. And I put flowers on the side then glue the hearts on with icing.

CCChefDol: ..and if the heart hadn't made it I had NO spare!
CCChefPwd: That is asking for trouble Dol - No extra pieces is a sure way to get one broken
CCChefDol: I know it is...but it was a gamble they agreed on...were friends too - was 4 or more inches high and we went though construction site...I drove

Other cakes that I think were special and unusual that I have done are already pictured on my web site. It is not that I am such a great decorator, it is just that these unusual cakes break the monotony and offer a challenge to put-to-use some of the wonderful techniques I have learned.

I am sure many of us have had requests to do x-rated cakes.  Yes these are unusual requests but I refuse to do them.  They are simply very poor judgment in my opinion for someone to want to cut them up and eat them.  Besides just being plain offensive.

CCChefDol: I had a rule...x-rated...if I thought I needed to hide it from the kids I didn't do it

1.  I did have one request from a repeat customer that was close to x-rated.  (PICTURE, click here) She and her husband were hosts to four young men at Reese Air Force base.  Hosts act as a local contact for these young men away from their families and homes.  The hosts invite them into their homes for meals,  help them if emergency situations come up,  let them know about things in the area and otherwise act as family while they were in air force training here in Lubbock.  This group of four young men had one in their group who was here from Italy.  Each class training group must design their own patch and come up with a motto.  This group decided on "fly naked" in Italian as the motto and the rest was designed around that.  The customer told me all of this before she told me what she wanted on her cake.
   She gave me the height and hair color of each of the young men and this is what she wanted.  Each of the young men figure piped with scarf  around their necks flying in the wind(with their name on it), helmet on, combat boots on and saluting the commanders plane flying overhead.  From the back side - otherwise naked except for those few things.  That is as close to x-rated as I will ever do for a customer.

2.  An unusual grooms cake request was for a prairie dog standing up in his hole eating an apple. (PICTURE, click here)   The young woman who ordered this cake  had gone out to this prairie dog town (a small protected area we have here in town for these little critters ) every Sunday afternoon for years and fed them apples.  Her fiancé was an air force pilot in training and had never even heard of these little animals until he met her.  He teased her unmercifully about this and therefore his whole family and buddies had also taken up the teasing.  When she came to order her cakes, together they ordered the brides cake and then she told him she wanted to do something special for him for the grooms cake and asked him to wait in the car for her while she ordered it.   She ordered a three dimensional prairie dog eating a piece of apple and wanted it kept totally secret until he opened the door at the reception and saw the cake. She did get even for all of the teasing she had taken.

CCChefPwd: I just wish I had been a fly on the wall so I could have seen his reaction

ALMOST ANYTHING MAY BE REQUESTED FOR A GROOMS CAKE THESE DAYS.
Nearly all of the unusual cakes on my web site were requested for grooms cakes.  That address is http://members.aol.com/pwdsugar/index.html

3. The Sslotsky sandwich w/ Dorritos (looks like a hamburger) (PICTURE, click here) was done for a groom who was graduating from medical school.  Every day for lunch he had  one of these sandwiches.  And it had to have exactly what he ate.  I bought a sandwich just like he ate and then constructed the sandwich with the coloring and layering as close as I could get to the real thing.

4.  The Tabasco bottle (PICTURE, click here) was a request from a groom who was from Louisiana and loved Tabasco sauce on literally everything.
The pickup truck was a request from a grooms mother.  She said the only thing he might love as much as the bride was his new pickup.

5.  A few weeks ago I did a 3 dimensional golf ball (PICTURE, click here) that was supposed to be in the rough on top of a large square cake.  The florist brought me a little bare grass and leather to make the rough from and I added small twigs made from fondant and dipped strawberries.  The indentions on the fondant covered ball were made with a ball tool.  (picture later)

6. The grooms cake request for a cake to look like a tree with dimension and  initials carved on the tree trunk  was a challenge.  (PICTURE, click here) They didn't want the cake standing up (thank goodness).  But they didn't just want a cut out shape either.

7.  A groom who lived on a ranch (south of here where there isn't much but ranch land) requested prickly pear cactus, bear grass, rope, horseshoes, brands and chocolate shavings on his cake.  (PICTURE, click here)  I find it challenging to try to figure out a way to do those unusual requests.  Unusual requests do stretch our abilities sometimes.

8.  A groom who has a masters degree in percussion instruments, (PICTURE, click here) teaches band in one of the local high schools and plays in the symphony orchestra requested the life size snare drum for his grooms cake.   (I didn't know you could get a Masters degree in drums.  Lol)

9.  A couple who were both architect students at Texas tech requested the villa rotunda by Pladio to be constructed for their cake.  (PICTURE, click here) Graduating students in this architect school make a trip to Italy to study the architecture in the famous buildings as part of their class work.  This building was the favorite of the sites they visited.

If you haven't checked out my web page yet - most of these pictures are  found there  http://members.aol.com/pwdsugar/index.html

10.  A cake I did back in 1981 was an unusual request.  A customer for whom I had done prior cakes was a preliminary judge in the Miss America Pageant. (PICTURE, click here)  She ordered a round cake with Susan Powell's portrait on top for her to pick up at the airport as they were flying up to Oklahoma to present this to Susan as she was presented back to Oklahoma as Miss America.  The only picture I have of this cake is a very yellowed newspaper clipping.  Sorry.

11. My husband just reminded me about another unusual cake.  A train In scale about 12 ft long that had to really whistle and really Smoke.  This was another cake for that same church I did that Elisha cake for.  I think that one had to have ten cars for the tenth anniversary.  It was fun sitting down at the railroad tracks
with my windows locked making sketches of that many different cars to do replicas of.  Took me nearly all day just to make the first sketches.  My husband made all of the supports for the cakes to sit on and we used powdered sugar in a pressurized tank for the smoke.  He would step on a switch and up the smoke would come. The preacher got the whistle from the miniature train shop and we put that in the coal car and he had the switch to that.  He just stepped on the switch and it whistled.

CCChefDol: Pwd...was this for a family member?
CCChefPwd: No that same church the Elisha cake was for
CCChefDol: oh gosh...hope you got paid this time?
CCChefPwd: Are you kidding?  Paid - at that time I did not understand that

I agree with Dolores that almost anything is possible if they have enough money to pay for your time.  These cakes are very time consuming and you must charge more to do them.

 I do cakes is a good friend of mine here in town.  Besides running a small business called paper trails and doing cakes,  she and her husband are cavers.  They enjoy going down into the unexplored caves and searching for new caves.  She has had at least one wedding cake to do in the past with stalactites and stalagmites  in the separations between the cakes.  

SWEETS1994: 4yr old son wants a tractor cake for b-day this year. I'm a candy maker, not cake maker!
SWEETS1994: Can someone help me????
Icing Wiz: sweets you can do a color flow from a coloring book
SWEETS1994: Icing, color flow?

Cindycake1: I photocopied Earlene's serving chart out of the ACD magazine and laminated it and hung it on my wall.
*This chart is available from Sugarcraft (ACD Magazine-last month), or from Earlene's web site
It's been real helpful!
CCChefDol: Cindy...one chart that is correct...
Cindycake1: Yes. It took a minute to study it but it has a lot of info packed into a small space
CCChefPwd: Cindy I use that chart every day -it is the most valuable thing I have
Icing Wiz: I am still trying to understand it. since most of my pans are 6-8-10 etc.
CCChefDol: Icing - pans are available in odd size too...we carry them

CAKESUP: I did a road kill posum for a grooms cake and redid it for  a convention but it was removed
CCChefDol: CAKE...now I know who you are!!!!! I sure remember that one...that one did look real
CAKESUP: That cake had a great story behind it.
CAKESUP: Groom was a country boy, family hunted and fished.  Bride got smart and started asking what was for dinner before she would commit to coming .. They started telling here roadkill. Good mother and her would marry her.  She did, he did and the roadkill possum cake was his surprise!
MaraTLee: Cake, why would he surprise her with a road kill ?
CAKESUP: I really didn't think it was that bad.  I could have been a lot more gory

IbeBakin4U: I have an order for a grooms cake in Aug. for a replica of the OSU football stadium
CCChefPwd: Shirley Manbeck did one of those stadium cakes for Texas university student. She used the puddles for faces for the spectators
IbeBakin4U: I think I can handle it with the horseshoe pan

Icing Wiz: for a grooms cake I have done fish, an airboat with alligators and football related cakes
CCChefDol: Icing...alligators of course : )
CCChefDol: yes Icing...can we see it???
Icing Wiz: yes, I do I will show you July 3rd and maybe you can scan it Dolores
CCChefDol: okay...great idea...takes only minutes

Icing Wiz: I really think the weirdest cake I did was a giant screw
CCChefDol: Icing...reminds me of the giant carrot I did...it looked so real
CCChefPwd: A giant screw - I wonder what they were trying to tell the recipient
Icing Wiz: it took my husbands input to get it to look right finally at 1:30 am I did what he said. Actually I think he owned a screw company
CCChefPwd: Oh so they weren't trying to put the screws to him  LOL

Shavkin: Steve has a fun and masterpiece cake that HE does!
CCChefDol: well Diane...discribe it for us please???
Icing Wiz: does Steve decorate cakes too Diane
Shavkin: Nope.  Just did a silly cake for me one time when I was bedridden. It's on my web site, now.  You take a cake mix - chocolate, of course, There's only one kind of flavor for Steve - Chocolate! Then you open a can of your favorite frosting - Dark Chocolate
Fudge, of course.! You frost the entire cake with lots and lots of chocolate frosting! Next, take the back of the spoon and tap it all over the cake.  Want to laugh when you don't feel like it because you don't feel very good?  This will do it! About the cake contest.  Well, Darlene from PA was chosen to teach Steve and Jerry how to make a parchment bag so that they could enter the one-tip contest. They got into position in front of their cakes and started the contest with everyone else.  Steve took the bag out of his pocket that
CCChefPwd: Those one tip contests are fun
Shavkin: Darlene showed them how to make and handled one to Jerry and one to Jerry's. Steve's theme was horse fly. He decorated the cake with bright pink frosting.
and drew a horsefly on the cake. He looked at the cake and decided it looked like an airplane, instead of a horsefly.  So he wrote (Steve has an incredible spur-of-the-moment sense of humor) on the cake, "Fly Horse Airlines".  And, got the biggest applaud ever  when it was his turn to show his cake!

MaraTLee: I made a Noah's ark pop up book cake. all the characters where made out of cookies
I iced all the cookies with royal icing after I baked them on sticks.
Icing Wiz: I have done a Noah's ark with all the animals using football pan and graham crackers. My ark had flamingos I don't know if Noah had ever seen a flamingo
CCChefDol: <---me too...pretzel for geraffe neck
CCChefPwd: I had one of those guitars to do - and to figure out how to support that icing long neck was some kind of fun - considering they did not want that support to show
Icing Wiz: I had to take the cake 5 hours away so I made all the animals out of Royal ahead of time
took a sheet cake and football cake with all my supplies and finished it there

Cindycake1: I did a giant guitar cake with a steel guitar and candy guitar trim for a David Kirsch concert. He took the entire cake on the bus with him back to Nashville
   A girl at work has had a real ant problem at home so I did her b-day cake completely covered in black ants!
IbeBakin4U: CIN was she able to eat it?
Cindycake1: Yea. It was all figure piped
MaraTLee: By the by, vinager(sp) is an ant deterrent.
CCChefDol: black ants?
Cindycake1: Yes, Bug are fun to make
CCChefPwd: I love Collette's ant  and strawberries wedding cake.
JWGPKG: Mara, how do you use vinegar to deter ants?

CCChefPwd: I did the cheese and mice for my sister and she wouldn't eat it LOL

Cindycake1: I did a giant cowboy boot for a wedding cake. The groom's cake was a horseshoe
CCChefDol: Cindy...was one in MBN
Cindycake1: That's where I got the idea to build it

IbeBakin4U: I did wedding cake with pigs clustered instead of flowers

CCChefDol: <---do [still] send pictures email if you have them

Bridal1: Has everyone got a scanner but me???
Icing Wiz: I don't have one yet Carolyn
IbeBakin4U: Bridal I don't have one
Bridal1: My daughter wants me to get one.  Saw one advertised on AOL for $59 - any good????
Icing Wiz: $59 sounds too cheap
Bridal1: I thought so, Icing, but it was an AOL ad as I logged on.
CCChefPwd: Spend a little more money and get a good one.  Not a hand held scanner - NO good
CCChefDol: Bridal --- NO! Don't waste your money on a hand-held scanner.
Icing Wiz: I got a book from library on what to look for in a good scanner at a medium price like $150
CCChefDol: Scanners cost $300.00 at the very least. HP is very supportive
Icing Wiz: before you buy one I can send you that info Bridal
CCChefDol: NEVER a hand-held...<---been there
JWGPKG: The higher the "# x #", the better your resolution (clearer picture).
CCChefPwd: I have  a Musteck and it does a good job
Shavkin: I have a HP ScanJet 5p.  Love it!
CCChefDol: Diane...me too...but 4c
L2jlu2: Sheila, pls send me too, ia m looking for a scanner also
CCChefDol: Mines older
CCChefPwd: me too <----- been there with the hand held one - don't go there
Bridal1: This was a HP (whatever that means!!]
CCChefDol: HP=Hewlit Packard
JWGPKG: I have a Mustek 1200 III EP; on sale at Office Depot.  I like it.
MBF821: What is the largest size picture that you can scan?
CCChefDol: 8 1/2 x 14"
CCChefPwd: When you have to blow up a sketch someone brings you that scanner
is great. No more fast trips to the copy store
Shavkin: The largest picture?  Whatever you can fit in the scanner.
JWGPKG: I think mine was somewhere between $225 and $250.
Shavkin: I use Paint Shop Pro to resize the picture.
Bridal1: Pwd, do you use it like a copy machine???
CCChefPwd: Sometimes
CCChefDol: ...insert a scanned picture into your word processor and enlarge real easy too
Bridal1: My copy machine is broke right now.  Think it just needs cleaned/
CCChefDol: Bridal...the GOOD scanners can act like a copier
Shavkin: How Dee?
CCChefDol: has software to make it a copier
JWGPKG: You can scan & save, e-mail, copy, etc.
CCChefPwd: Scan it in and then you can enlarge it or shrink it or just print it
Bridal1: So does my fax, but not as good as my copy machine.
MBF821: Yes Diane, but how big a picture will your model take?
CCChefPwd: Letter size is what will fit in mine
CCChefDol: Diane's is like mine...it is the best - legal size documents are the biggest.
MBF821: Thanks. I was just wondering what is available. Ours does 4x6 max.
Shavkin: Steve did a lot of checking and decided on this one. We had a cheaper one and it was terrible.
CCChefDol: Bridal...go to Office Depot or something and have them demo dif. models and priced ones is best

Shavkin: Someone sent me some very old picture with the non-gloss finish. The picture looked faded, but after scanning it; it looks really good. It will be on my web site in Viewers Picture Sharing in September.

ICES...and other travels:
Icing Wiz: Dolores, depending on when we leave I amy stop on the way Friday or if we get in Thursday
CCChefDol: I'm driving...my castle won't fit on the plane even if I bought a seat or 2 LOL
Shavkin: Icing are u talking about ur arriving at convention?
Icing Wiz: I will bring my sis-in law she is interested in cakes and lives in Ohio
Bridal1: Yes, driving to convention - isn't that $12 a day parking ridiculous at the hotel???????
Bridal1: Well, it should have been negotiated into the contract to get validated parking.
Shavkin: R U driving to convention?
Bridal1: We Missourians are going in on Monday to convention.
CCChefDol: I think it is a 8 hr drive for me, maybe less
CCChefPwd: Last year we found out it was cheaper for the four of us to take a limo than to use the shuttle: Sorry that was two years ago
CCChefPwd: Since our last flight leg is on a puddle jumper wouldn't they just die if we tried to fly with something that big Dol.  LOL Our challenge is to be able to work small enough this time
Four of us with sugar art from here - They are going to love us by the time we get there
Icing Wiz: I am more excited about seeing you then the rest of the trip
CCChefDol: Ibe and I could hardly stop talking 'cakes' LOL
CCChefDol: oh Icing...now I have to live up to it
Bridal1: I've already told Icing all about you Dol!!!
Shavkin: Bring $$$$ - Dee has a great shop.  Lots and lots of goodies!
IbeBakin4U: You'll do great DOL
Bridal1: Oh, just all the stuff I know about you Dol!!
Shavkin: I surprised Dee.
Shavkin: The sweet gal Dee has working for her informed me that Dee was
really busy
Shavkin: and needed to work on what she was doing.  Then, I told her I was
from NY
CCChefDol: LOL Diane...they try to 'protect' me
Shavkin: and knew Dee would want to see me.
CCChefPwd: Protecting her from the customers  LOL
Shavkin: So, she went to Dee and "tricked" her into coming into the customer
area.  And, there I was! Steve, too!
CCChefDol: Diane...I thought I was dreaming!
CCChefPwd: Fun Diane
CCChefPwd: Someday I hope to be able to do that too.  Right now I will just dream
Icing Wiz: Please tell her I am coming Dolores so she will let me see you.  I will be driving over 1,000 miles
CCChefDol: But Shirley is moving to OH, right?
CCChefPwd: Right and I will have to come by your place on my way to her house
CCChefDol: Icing...they don't usually do that...I think I was learning to build web pages --- waaay back
CCChefPwd: Crying big crocodile tears - She isn't moving until next summer - so we will have to spend
quality time before then
Bridal1: When do you have that kind of time Pwd???
CCChefPwd: She comes here Bridal when I get in a bind and helps me out. She is a quick learner and I show her what I need done and she does it. We spent all week making the flowers that are posted in the
picture on last weeks