Fish in the boat cake

Apparently a fish (claimed to be IDed as a shad) jumped into Tom's single one day while he was out on the water.  After providing evidence of a fish smudge and scale on the deck of the shell, I made a cake to commemorate the event.

The boat was made of chocolate melted onto parchment paper and shaped to resemble a shell.  The oars were pretzel rods with white chocolate melted to make the blades (blue food coloring was added to the lower half of the blade before piping it onto parchment paper).  The fish were Sweedish fish and the bow-ball was a white pearl candy. 

Quaker City 2014

       

For the Quaker City Regatta that is hosted annually by the Fairmount Rowing Association I made 2 cakes with the Quaker City logo on top.  When you sliced the cakes open, the cross section had an "F" (for Fairmount) made of out chocolate and vanilla cakes.  Here's how it was made:

The cake was made with 4 layers, each of which was composed of 3 concentric circles of chocolate and vanilla cake.  For each layer I made 2 cakes (1 chocolate & 1 vanilla), cut out a donut of appropriate size, and then switched the donut shaped piece so that the outside and inside circles were the same flavor and the donut was the opposite flavor. 

                           Layer 1                                    Layer 2                                 Layer 4
        
 Layers 1 & 3 had the same pattern (outer rim, thin donut, inner circle) and layers 2 & 4 had the same pattern (outer rim, thick donut, small inner circle).  I used smaller cake pans and water glasses to trace the circles.

For the 13” pan I used, it is necessary to cut the outer and donut pieces at least into half to transfer them, but just put a bit of frosting in between and they will hold together fine.  Also put a thin layer of frosting at all of the seams to help bind them together.  A thin layer of frosting between the cake layers also helped bind it together.

The chocolate frosting was a chocolate sour cream frosting and the white frosting was a white chocolate cream cheese frosting.  The Q was again traced using a smaller cake pan and then filled in using a small spatula, the writing and outside decorations on the cake was piped on.

 Surprise!

Washer Cake

Tom kept dropping and loosing washers when he was fixing the rigging on the Keiffer 4+ and we were joking about making a cake about it...so I did.

It was very hot so I didn't feel like baking and instead I made a simple refrigerator cake using Nabisco chocolate wafers and whipped cream.  It's very easy and the recipe is even on the box; just spread whipped cream between each cookie and stack them together.  The cookies absorb the moisture of the whipped cream and turn cake-like with some whipped cream remaining between each layer.  Delicious!  I just arranged the cookies in a circle like this:

and then covered the whole "cake" with grey whipped cream and piped onto the top with a slightly darker whipped cream.

Goose Cake

Anyone who rows knows how annoying the geese on the river can be; they are slow to get out of the way when you are rowing and if you don't properly protect your dock they will defecate all over it.  So I was very excited yesterday when, for the first time, I hit a goose with my sweep oar while we were doing a piece (no, it did not die, I just whacked him/her on the head).  I decided to make a cake to commemorate the event!  On my row this morning, a goose starting honking at me in nearly the same location near Peter's Island.  I like to think (s)he was the same one that I had hit and remembered to stay away this time.

I made a simple chocolate cake using the 13" circular pans and put whipped cream with chocolate chunks in the filling.  The frosting was a simple butter cream frosting and the goose neck was made of melted dark and white chocolate piped onto parchment paper.  Since it is hot, I let the chocolate solidify in the fridge.  I used the same method for the oar, but added blue food coloring to the white chocolate.  The consistency of the white chocolate got a bit funny and stiff when I added the food coloring, but if worked well enough to to the second half of the oar blade.

Cake for the damaged boat

I stepped a bit too far back my first time getting out of a double and caused a slight crack in the deck.  I made an apology cake that documented the crack and also the lesson that I learned - watch your step.  I did put the seat on backwards though!  oops!

4th of July at Bachelor's 2013

This is the cake I brought to the Bachelor's boathouse July 4th party.  Simple outside, surprising inside!  It was made in the 13" cake pan and there are a lot of directions online how to make the cake pattern, here's one: http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/red-white-and-blue-layered-flag-cake/9aaef2a0-b01d-4cb8-9bab-c0d0451a1065

Wharton Sprints 2014

We had a lot of people at Wharton Sprints this spring so I made a very big cake for the post race party.  I believe it was made out of 6 cookie trays worth of cake.  Strawberry filling attached the layers and then White chocolate cream cheese frosting was used to decorate it.

We had boats from Yale, Harvard, and MIT participating in the race so I made a boat representing each of the teams.  The boats were frosted rice crispy treats and the oars were white chocolate with mini pretzels for the shaft. I used frosting to make the school's logos on the oar blades.

As you can see by the bow balls,  Wharton won the race (on the cake at least!)

I made ducks courting on the edge of the river out of frosting.