A few months ago I donated a cake to my son’s school’s fundraising auction. Bids went high, and it was a huge ego boost to see how many people wanted my cake and what they were willing to pay for it. In the end, it went way over the asking price, and was bought by a family who was hosting a party they too had donated to the auction.
The fabulous party took place last week and was a Greek themed party, simply titled “My Big Fat Greek Barbeque.” There was ouzo and stuffed grape leaves, plenty of Windex and a plastic covered couch, and, of course, a whole roasted (and delicious) lamb.
The original cake request was a Greek flag. Simple enough. A big sheet cake covered in blue and white fondant. I should have stopped there and the cake would have been decorated within an hour. But I can’t do simple. And that’s when I decided to start doing some “arCAKEology.”
You know I’m an archaeologist. I’m also an art historian, and I specialize in Greek and Roman art. So what could I do to express this in cake? A sculpture was out of the question. A building? Maybe. A vase? Hmmmm, not sure…
A few months ago, when I started thinking about blogging, as well as a cake business, I thought about a name. One day, walking down the street, I came up with arCAKEology and thought it was brilliant. I was so proud of myself! Then, I wrote about it on a message board/forum I often frequent, using it as a sounding board. Unfortunately, it was very much rejected. People didn’t like it and thought it made no sense. They asked if I would only be making dinosaur cakes. Ok, first of all, people, it’s archaeology, not paleontology. But still… I decided to keep the name. I still thought it was very clever, and by blogging I would be exploring both my cakes and my life, doing a bit of personal archaeology.
When I made the Greek cake, I realized THAT was arCAKEology. And it didn’t have any dinosaurs. The bottom layer, a moist vanilla cake with Swiss meringue buttercream, was covered in black fondant with red details, resembling a 5th century Greek red figure vase. As I thought of what to decorate it with, I had another great idea: dolphins. You see, this party was for my son’s school, and the school symbol is a dolphin. And this, of course is in addition to the frequent appearances of dolphins in Greek art, starting already in Minoan art from the second millennium BCE, and their connection to Greek deities, such as Poseidon and Dionysos. Besides the dolphins, there were a few geometric decorations, meanders, hand-drawn on red fondant, with an edible ink black pen.
The bottom came out beautiful, but I still needed to have a topper. And what better than a Greek temple? The tricky part is that it’s not that easy to make a Greek temple out of edible material. In the end, I made a temple out of a gum paste and fondant mix. The best part about making the temple was mixing the colors and trying to achieve a marbleized color, making the temple look as if it were really made out of marble. It came out great! By the way, so did the red used for the dolphins – it looked as close as possible to some wonderful 5th century BCE vases. Oh, and the temple is a generic one. It’s not supposed to be a specific one, as the number of columns does not follow the traditional ratio, but that’s less important, right?
And this is the whole cake. I’m happy; I think it’s one of the best I’ve ever made.
arCAKEology 