SUMMARY: On the episode of Ace of Cakes, “The Eagle Has Landed”, the team has to make three cakes in one day. After all of those cakes are due, they have to finish the other cakes for the week. They are making the Make a Wish Foundation 25th Anniversary cake, a golfing Santa cake, a fork lift, the Philadelphia Eagles Stadium, and a Nikon D60 camera. The Make a Wish Foundation cake was going to be seven tiers tall and was completely covered in blue fondant with white and silver details and a logo. The golfing Santa was five feet tall, and the stadium was so lifelike! It was amazing to see the team work together to get all of this done in a matter of five days!
RESPONSE: There were several neat techniques that the team used throughout the show. When they were making the stadium cake, they needed to make the stands look like they were full. My first instinct would have been to either sculpt all of the people, or to paint them onto the chairs. However, they used tiny sprinkles and gum paste to make it look like there were a ton of people there. What was so neat was that it really looked like tiny people! For the Nikon D60 cake, the decorator had to carve it all out of sheet cake. However, the first time that she tried, she made it too small and had to start over again. Duff said, “She really put herself back, but it was all in the name of doing something excellent” (“The Eagle Has Landed”). He was very right about that cake. The decorator did such an incredible job creating all of the buttons and knobs. She didn’t leave out one detail! One tip that they used was to make the lens. They melted sugar and poured it into a round mold. Once it hardened, they placed it in the fondant and it looked incredibly life-like! The cake turned out great and made you just want to play with the camera instead of eat it!
“The Eagle Has Landed.” Ace of Cakes. Food Network. 2 Apr 2009.