Baking can be a tedious task, but self-taught cook Rhiannon, aka cakecrumbs, accepts the creative and artistic challenges of preparing delicious treats. The Australian food enthusiast even took on an ambitious commission for her sister, an educator about to give a few lessons on geological sciences to primary school children. The project would require her to construct a spherical layer cake in the likeness of Earth and its inner layers (inner core, outer core, mantle, and crust).
It might sound simple enough, but as other bakers can attest to its difficulty, Rhiannon came across a few obstacles. While most layer cakes are simply circular layers of cake stacked atop each other, this Earth Structural Layer Cake would need to be more curved. Originally, the baker thought it was impossible, but as she states in her blog: “I didn’t have the equipment, nor the funds to purchase it, so I had to come up with a plan B. Somehow I went from ‘it’s impossible’ to having multiple ideas. Go figure.”
Rhiannon explains her process: “Plan B involved baking a cake inside a cake inside a cake… With the inner core, outer core and mantle all cake-d up, it was time for the crust. Chocolate buttercream filled that role… I added a little white and marbled it into the fondant to make some clouds. I hand cut all the continents from fondant, then painted them with a gel paste mixture using a dry brush technique. This process all up took me about 6 hours and was the most arduous process.”
Cakecrumbs blog
via [thinx, Neatorama]