Surprise....Say Cheese!

Other than designing and cooking and watching Lakers games, another passion of mine has become Tahitian Dancing. For about a year and a half I've been dancing with the group Te Varua Ori (TVO).  Not only has this group taught me about the Tahitian dance form and culture, but I've also developed an extended family with the various individuals. Fellow dancer, Josh wanted to surprise his girlfriend and TVO dancer, June with a couple special birthday cakes. June's actual birthday was on a Thursday, a practice day...so her first surprise came as a simple 8-inch round chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting per Josh's request. (Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of that cake. Sorry.)  Little did June know that Josh had another surprise planned...the invite went something like this: 

Alrighty guys and gals. so Thursday September 9th is JUNE NICHOLE's birthday! (woot!) but we're gonna surprise her 2 days later!! (shhh..)

So Saturday the 11th, June is under the impression that a few friends want to have a photo shoot at the park. Little does she know.. she is in for the picnic of her LIFE.

3 legged races, tug-of-war, volleyball, water balloon fights, egg toss and more! I just want to gather as many...of the people she loves the most together for some good clean summer fun in the sun. 

Cute right? As you might have guessed, June is a photographer [check out her work here]...so it was only appropriate to make her a Camera Cake! 

Originally, Josh had another idea in mind for the design of this cake...he was thinking of a regular round cake with a lens telescoping out from it. Although it was a great idea, I also thought about the transportation and delivery. The picnic was at Butterfield Park in Chino Hills, almost an hour drive. A tiered cake is a lot more prone to accidents, so I decided to go with my own idea...which he ended up liking better :) June owns a Canon, so that's what I modeled it after. Here are the images that helped me with the details. [*Note: the final product is not quite as detailed nor does it replicate a specific Canon model]  

This cake was essentially made up of rectangular and cylindrical forms, so I treated each piece separately before adding them together. The flavor was vanilla with cream cheese frosting. You will notice that the frosting is pink....I have to admit, that was a bit of a flaw.  I made pink frosting to cover June's first cake, but wasn't happy with the hue and decided to make it a turquoise color instead.  I didn't want to waste the pink frosting, so I used it on the Camera cake.

Once I had the main form prepped, I was ready to carve the camera's body.  It felt like I was in Design school again, except instead of drawing a camera in perspective, I was sculpting it out of cake.  I printed out a copy of the camera's top view to use as my template.

I added a crumb coat to the newly carved form and covered it in black fondant.  I cut out a circular shape where the "lens" would fit.  I also cut out an area on the side only to re-cover it with a textured piece of black fondant...this was to mimic the leathery material and the seams that a real camera possesses. 

A cake does NOT look like a camera until you add all the right visual cues...it needs buttons, a lens, seams, and other details that make a camera operate.

To get the shiny quality on the lens and screen areas, all I did was simply brush on some water over the fondant. This was one cake in particular that was meant to be viewed in a full 360 degrees, so I didn't forget to add details to the back.

I wanted to include a strap that would add that special touch. But what good is a strap if there are no strap holders on the camera to hook them onto, right? Lastly, I piped on the text that would personalize this cake especially for June and her surprise picnic.

This cake was ready to be part of a fun-filled SURPRISE picnic at the park! June was surprised and really admired her cake.

I stayed long enough at the park to get pictures of my favorite part...the cake cutting! Since they had no knife, they were crafty enough to use one-half of a pair of scissors to do the cutting....MacGyver would be proud.

Overall, I'd say this Surprise was a great success on a beautiful Summer Saturday in September! I'd like to thank Josh again for letting me be part of June's special day.  See you both at practice! :)

Once again, thank you for stopping by...I hope you were inspired.

~Abs of Cakes~