"Mooooobagawk!!"

Danny is my wonderful husband whose birthday we celebrated this weekend. I've been pretty busy with the whole "cake thing" these last few months but the WHOLE reason I took the classes in the first place, was to be able to make nice cakes for my family. So, when Danny told me to "keep it simple" for his birthday, I looked at him like he was crazy. Here, I thought he wanted a cake in the shape of a human arm, bone and all! I was seriously going to make him that cake, but after looking at a few Google images of just that sight, both Danny and I agreed that it was a little (a LOT) too gross to serve our family. I mean...REALLY. Then, he wanted an R2D2 cake. 3-D. Which nearly brought me to tears. When was I going to have the time to make that one? Maybe for his fiftieth birthday. Maybe.

So to give me more ideas about what to do for his cake, he said, "I like movies, the Academy Awards..." Yeah, yeah, yeah... Danny really didn't need a 4-tiered cake, so I could keep it simple in terms of design, but I wanted him to have a cake that was meaningful and truly him.

Danny IS a huge fan of movies and I really wanted to incorporate something about that passion in the cake. And I remembered that when he was a Hall Director at Ripon College many moons ago, he created a group for film enthusiasts just like him. They called themselves the "Cinemaniacs". Danny made a really wierd logo with a cow/chicken (yeah, you read that right), and started a film festival for the students and community members. The rest is history.

I searched high and low for a copy of the logo he made. I finally found it on the Ripon College website (Facebook also has a Cinemaniacs page). And here is the "Moooobagawk". Danny will have to fill us all in on the meaning behind the cow/chicken and what it has to do with film, but it's truly a Danny creation and one that I wanted to incorporate onto his cake.

The great thing about teaching the Wilton classes is that I, too, am learning. I've been showing my class participants how to do a piping gel transfer. That's when you trace an image onto wax/parchment paper using piping gel, then you place the wax/parchment paper onto the cake surface. Once that's done, you decorate away. That's how I was able to get the logo onto Danny's cake. If I was a better artist, I may be able to do this free-hand...but I am not.

When I finally showed the cake to Danny, he cried out, "Oh Moobagawk!" and was pleased with the design I chose for him. The surprise was the actual cake itself. I made a yellow sponge cake with absolutely amazing strawberry buttercream. This is called a "vertical" or "spiral" cake and it.is.divine.

Happy early birthday to you, Danny! I love you so!