Introduction: This Cake Really Is a Lie
I knew I had to do something special for my husband's birthday. Since he’s a gamer of the highest order, I wanted to make him something fun and...relevant to his interests. And since he just finished playing Portal 2, I had the perfect inspiration to draw from.
In the original Portal there is a recurring theme of a cake, used as a sort of reward, only under false pretenses. ‘The cake is a lie’.
In Portal 2, the most entertaining character is a round and goofy robot named Wheatley.
So I made a cake. A big, luscious chocolate cake…or is it?!
The cake…was a lie!
Merely a wide cardboard tube I constructed, taped, added a 'lid' to, and frosted with ordinary tub frosting and left to dry overnight. The cherries are also real!
Here’s the real cake. Hello, Wheatley!
Yes, it was sadly quite lumpy and used a heaping helping of artistic license, but after two full attempts I was just grateful to have a cake that remained spherical . Engineering challenges only gave me about an hour or so to wrap the fondant and decorate Wheatley before birthday celebrations began. The bottom half is actually styrofoam for stability, but the whole lot was frosted and covered in fondant as usual. The blue glowing eye? A battery-powered LED light set inside and covered with a melted mint hard candy!
The most important thing? Two days of technical difficulties and a major caketastrophe later, it was done! And frankly, delicious.
(And just so you know my fondant attempts aren't always disastrous, I've included his previous year's birthday cake - an Xbox controller!)
In the original Portal there is a recurring theme of a cake, used as a sort of reward, only under false pretenses. ‘The cake is a lie’.
In Portal 2, the most entertaining character is a round and goofy robot named Wheatley.
So I made a cake. A big, luscious chocolate cake…or is it?!
The cake…was a lie!
Merely a wide cardboard tube I constructed, taped, added a 'lid' to, and frosted with ordinary tub frosting and left to dry overnight. The cherries are also real!
Here’s the real cake. Hello, Wheatley!
Yes, it was sadly quite lumpy and used a heaping helping of artistic license, but after two full attempts I was just grateful to have a cake that remained spherical . Engineering challenges only gave me about an hour or so to wrap the fondant and decorate Wheatley before birthday celebrations began. The bottom half is actually styrofoam for stability, but the whole lot was frosted and covered in fondant as usual. The blue glowing eye? A battery-powered LED light set inside and covered with a melted mint hard candy!
The most important thing? Two days of technical difficulties and a major caketastrophe later, it was done! And frankly, delicious.
(And just so you know my fondant attempts aren't always disastrous, I've included his previous year's birthday cake - an Xbox controller!)