Tea at 2 000 Feet

I had my design picked out months ago :-D I've been dreaming about this cake for ages and thinking about all the things I wanted to include. I absolutely love everything about this design and knew I wanted to make it as soon as I saw it!

I knew I really wanted the cake to look like it was floating so I invested in an acrylic tube so that the support structure would basically be invisible. I love the idea of a whale/airship hybrid and wanted to include steam of some sort. I ended up using dry ice for the steam coming out of the whale and around the base to look like clouds. I used an LED light for the eye.

The entire cake is about 28" tall. The whale and the base are made of cake. I had to add a base otherwise the whale would be too top heavy. The whale is made of marble cake, ganache, buttercream and modeling chocolate! All the details on the whale where dusted with metallic luster dusts from www.thesugarart.com The boat is made of modeling chocolate and the people are made of fondant. The ropes that are holding the boat to the whale are made of modeling chocolate.

This cake took me about 3 days of straight work! The first day I built my structure and baked my cakes. The second day I carved my whale, chilled it and began applying the layers of modeling chocolate on the body. The 3rd day I finished with the details on the whale and made the boat and people.

Videoing the cake was really fun! We bought a big block of dry ice and put it all around the base and in the little tube inside the whale. It looked really awesome on film! I had so much fun making this cake and was a little sad to cut into it but everyone said he was delicious and not too blubbery :)

Is it sick that I'm already thinking of next year??