Wedding caterers at wedding shows in hotels in springtime show elaborate cakes, often three tiers or round or square cakes. I saw three round cakes mounted on top of each other (no wobbly pillars!). Around the outside was a spiral chute turning the cake into a helper skelter (what the Americans calla with Ice mountains on a sloping cake and teeny model skiers - that's what I ordered for my son's thirteenth birthday cake. Photo cakes can be made for your family or business all over the world.
I've mislaid the old photo so I looked on the web. I found a spiral bar mitzvah ski cake from sweet grace.net of New Jersey, USA.
When I was organising a family 60th birthday party in Singapore I asked the caterer for a cake featuring the four hobbies or interests of the birthday boy - motorcycling, mountains (climbing/trekking), playing cards (bridge), and running through jungles (Hash House Harriers paper chase).
I thought I would get a slope or conical tower with tiny models of motorcyclist as the bottom, and climber half way up, and a playing card such as the King of hearts on the top. However, the caterer asked me to send me photos. He wanted my chosen mountain, which was Everest. The correct motorcycle.
My first thought was that the ideal bike would be a Harley. However, my biker had never owned a Harley. So he considered a that novelty bike for showoffs. Instead, to be safe and certain of pleasing him, I needed a picture of the current bike. But birthday to be boy was either between bikes or the bike was in the garage for repairs. Or he was elsewhere, or the bike was in another country to the birthday boy. So I opted for an old picture showing birthday boy on his most recent bike.
Next, which card. Surely, just any pack of cards. No. The caterer did not want to show a pack of cards but just one desired card. I had to specify which card.
What about the birthday date, day or month? Some think 13 is unlucky, so is 4 which is unlucky in Chinese. In Chinese 8 and 88 would be lucky.After many more phone calls and conversations we opted for an ace. Ace of hearts was too girly for our boy. But I had to avoid the Ace of Spades symbolising death. That left the ace of clubs. Birthday boy could respond to the demand to cut the cake and answer the call for 'Speech!' by mentioning playing cards, and membership of a club.
To my surprise the cake was just an oblong cake with one photo on the top showing my own four pictures. I had wanted a 3D cake but everybody seemed happy with the result. The flat top layer was removed and saved for later, whilst the oblong cake was cut up to eat. It was a huge cake. We put the leftovers in the freezer and went on eating a tiny finger size slice for tea at Sunday lunch on weekends for months afterwards.
When it came to my recent birthday in 2014, in the previous days I had seen lots of cakes featuring the birthday girls. I wanted a birthday cake with a photo of myself with one of my books.
As an author I wanted a cake in the shape of a book - quite a common design, I thought, which would be widely available, for weddings and bar mitzvahs.
The birthday cakes made like wedding cakes with fruit cake containing fruits and nuts, with marzipan on top, were three figure sums
For my birthday I asked for a cake with a photo of myself and my books. Time was running out. I settled for a card showing books, and my face on a cake.
Now I'm investigating photo cakes and edible photo machines. Here are some findings:
Edible printer
www.sugarshack.co.uk
Printer, ink, and edible sheets £150-£175.
Packs of edible icing sheets (25 in a pack) £25
Edible inks £45.
Customer Service: 44 (0)20 8204 2994
So if you have three or more celebrations in a year, it might be worthwhile investing in a kit.
Read more by Angela Lansbury, author, poet, travel writer:
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Today I recognised one. It was a square plastic tray with the corner cut out. It was the drip tray from the back of the base of a coffee maker, where it catches the coffee capsules. Mystery solved.
