Gamma Susie's This n That: Old Man Cake

Friday, August 2, 2013

Old Man Cake

My friend Dianna asked me to make a cake for her husbands birthday. She wanted an old man sitting in his chair. I know Mike is a good golfer (scratch!), hunter, and enjoys a beer now and then. So I came up with this cake. The top layer is chocolate with raspberry filling and the bottom is French Butter cream with Lemon Filling. They smelled so good while baking!

I made the "old man" sitting in a leather chair with a wooden table next to him. I couldn't figure out how to do the beer bottle and I know he enjoys his morning coffee so I made a coffee cup. I will try to do the beer bottle next year.

Because Mike is a hunter I knew he had bagged a polar bear that he has mounted in his house. I decided to do a bear rug. It came out pretty cool.

I put a putter and ball on the "green" where I placed the chair and table. There is a small sand trap on the side and I put his age on the flag stick.

I used the Marshmallow Fondant that I have used in all my other recipes along with the same Butter cream frosting. It was humid and I had to freeze the cakes. So I learned that when you are working on a frozen cake as it thaws it becomes very moist. It was easy to stick the stripes on but I didn't want to touch it much as it left marks.

I didn't know how I was going to mold the old man so I looked on line for some ideas and printed them off. More to get perspective than anything else. I started with the jeans and worked my way up. I did the head last. I used half gum paste and half fondant mixed together. The hands were hard and the face was tough. It took me several times to get it right.

I printed off a copy of Golf World magazine and superimposed Mikes face onto the front cover. On the back I also put old folks ads like Geritol, Viagra, and Centrum Silver.