When Physicist's fall in love. Maths geekcake

On my previous post (Monday of this week) I showcased a marvellous graph geekcake.

Today I'd like to share with you a jaw droppingly cute wedding geekcake. Originally featured over at Symmetry magazine. Symmetrymagazine.org Symmetry is an online, and paper magazine about particle physics and its connections to other aspects of life and science, from interdisciplinary collaborations to policy to culture.

Jason Rieger married Leah Welty, in August of 2004. Below is a picture of their cake.



Original photo taken by: Reidar Hahn, Fermilab

Unfortunately I don't know physics from a poke in the eye so I have no idea what the equations relate to.

See you on Friday!

Graphs + cake = brilliant geekcakes!

A bashful woman called Jennifer Harris sent me an email which read thus:

I thought I'd send you some pics of a geeky cake I did for my college's Economics Liaison bake sale. Every year when the Simmons College Economics Liaison has a bake sale they like to have a supply and demand graph cake. This is the cake from the year. I headed up the bake sale. It's not as fancy as some of the cakes you've featured on your blog, but it will certainly supply anyone's demand for cake!



I wonder what quantities P and Q represent?

I would just like to say that I think Jennifer's geekcake is fantastic. The passion and creativity and geek charm of a cake's topic, are just as important as the finished product.

Jennifer I salute you and your most delicious looking cake!

See you all on Wednesday.

Dem Bones, Dem bones*, Dice and wonderful Geekcakes

Dice.

Any table top RPG geek will always have a healthy collection of all shapes and sizes of dice.

The oldest known recorded reference to dice, is Sophocles the Greek writer. Sopocles lived between 496-406 BC, and being Greek, he claimed that the Greek invented dice, but there is no way to verify his claim. I'm not saying they didn't invent them, just that the Ancient Romans and Greeks do want to seem to take the creadit for inventing almost *everything*.

Apparently, before standard cubical dice became common, ancient peoples would use fruit stones, sets of flat sticks, sea shells, nut shells or even marked pebbles to get random results for games. Hmm. Fruit and Nut. Which leads me neatly to my favourite subject - of cake.

The cake pictured below is fashioned after the ever plentiful D20 - the twenty sided die. Every table top gamer I have ever met owns at least ten of these babies.

Used in numerous systems from original D&D to Warhammer, to World of Darkness to GURPS, dice are the universal RPG signature accessory.




Doesn't it look magnificently delicious?


I love the fact that the cake looks HUGE!

Original images, can be found at: RPGdigest, the blog of Bob Younce - a hobbiest gamer since 1979!

Thanks for reading.

See you all again on Friday!

[*At various points in history, small animal bones were used as dice. Playing with dice is still sometimes known as "rolling the bones".]

Academic Geekcake: The wonders of Chemistry

Lori over at the Clever Cake Studio blog, loves to experiment with the art of cake making:

"Since March 2008, I've been doing a cake almost every week to practice, learn, cry, recover, learn more, and make local supply shops rich. Here you'll find the results of each week's cake project as my little portfolio builds. Share in my relief and amazement each time a cake works out, and witness just how damn clever I have to force myself to be if things don't quite go as planned. "




Lori goes into detail on the cake creation:


"The book is supposed to be reminiscent of the CRC Handbook for Chem and Physics (87th Edition). It is for the birthday of an awesome chemical engineer at Nintendo.It’s made with white cake and chocolate filling. The red Erlenmeyer flash is raspberry with some raspberry liquor in the cake and preserves between the layers. The yellow acid bottle is, naturally, lemon cake with lemon curd filling. They are all covered in buttercream and fondant, and yes, the stopper in the acid bottle is a separate piece and can be lifted out."

Be sure to check out Lori's full gallery here, for plenty more fantastic (though not necessarily geeky) cakes.

I wish more cakes referenced textbook editions as inspiration. A true academia geekcake. Sounds delicious too.

See you Wednesday.

Annakin Lego Minifig GIANT geekcake

A quick one tonight.

Geeks seem to love Lego. I think it's the building combination possibilities.

Geeks feel passionate about the Star Wars universe. Even if you don't love it , I know, that you know, a geek who does.

So it is with great pleasure I present to you a giant, geekcake, Lego minifig, Chocolate, Anakin!



Original source is over at the Gamespot blog.

Apparently the entire thing is only chocolate cake and icing (excluding the lightsaber).

Whomever it was made for is one mighty luckiy eight year old !

See you Friday !

xkcd on a cake! xkcd geekcake!

Ahh, the humble web-comic. Although some are geekier than others, anyone who spends any significant amount of time online has a favourite one.

According to Wikipeda, the medium has only been around since the late 1980's. I'm not so sure about that, but I do know that one of the most fondly regarded web-comics currently in existence is (probably) xkcd.

It's uber geek (and proud of it), and mixes biting sarcasm with multi layered humour about high level maths, academia, physics, all thinks geek, and the authors musings on life, love and what it is to be human.

As you may have gathered I'm a little bit of a fan.

So I was delighted when I stumbled across a gorgeously iced xkcd cake which recreated an entire comic, over at the Google-centric blog Googlified.

Unfortunately this is the biggest picture I can find. Original comic link here:

[If you have any more info, about the creation of this iced gem, please do drop me an email at my gmail address]

That's it for tonight. See you Wednesday !

Come to the Darkside, we have CAKE! Darth Vader Geekcake!

I have featured Star Wars Geekcake creations before. Star Wars themed cakes and Dr Who themed cakes are probably the most popular geekcake creations.

The ultimate villain of the Star Wars universe is Darth Vader. The original Trilogy made his ultimate evil very clear. The 'Prequel trilogies' muddied the moral waters a little - Darth Vader as sympathetic character doesn't work for me but I admit it is utterly subjective. Your mileage may vary.

What I do know for sure is that I can't find any Annakin Skywalker cakes, but I can find Darth Vader cakes aplenty!

So here, are four of the best Vader cakes I have found to date.

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Over at carolynssweettooth site, is this marvellous piped icing rendition of Vader. Unfortunately I don't have any creation details.

Original source here.

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Discovered on Flickr, Jen of Jen's Creations shared her black and red icing version of Vader.



Unfortunately I do not have any creation details for this one either, but it sure looks tasty to me!

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An entirely different Jen over at Layersoflove.com, created this buttercream tribute to Lord Vader:

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And finally (again over at Flickr) we have Vader atop a flaming platform of icing:



Jane BK describes a little bit behind the creation of the fiery set piece:
Chocolate buttermilk cake with chocolate SMBC filling and covered in fondant. Darth is just regular fondant/gum-tex modeling paste.

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See you Monday!

Gingerbread Chevrons? Stargate geekcake!

Spanning 10 seasons, from 1997 until 2007, and with a total of 213 episodes, AND three spinoff series, (Atlantis, Infinity, and Universe) AND  three direct to DVD features, it's difficult to argue against the success of the Stargate meta-verse. A certain generation of fans, may always associate  Richard Dean Anderson with MacGyverr, but his turn as Jack O'Neill, might just eclipse that.

Being a huge Stargate and RDA fan, the talented Polly Hawthorn (whom you might remember from Monday's post) decided to recreate the SG:1 team .. in gingerbread!  Polly calls her creation: 'The Starcake and SG:1(Special Gingerbread 1)' 

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The base of each character is a gingerbread cookie, painted with icing of various colours and combined with a "few bits of fondant for the decorations on the uniforms and faces"

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Polly explains how the actual Stargate section was created: " ..,  was constructed like a cookie, I baked two halves then glued it together with icing and cut out small pieces for the gate chevrons then I used orange jelly icing left over from a dalek cookie kit and some gummy sweets cut to fit for the orange crystals. The centre of the Starcake is tinfoil over a circle of card. "

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Doesn't it look HUGE? I wonder how tall that stargate was...?

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That's all for tonight folks, see you Friday!

Do you know what this is? This is a dinosaur egg. The dinosaurs are breeding. Jurrasic Park geekcake.

I recently received an email from a very talented baker called Polly Hawcroft (aka PJ) who lives in London.

She sent me pictures of three of her current creations, two of which I shall share with you today.

Polly's mere description of the first cake makes me hungry..:

The Jurassic Park logo cake was something I made for a JP themed party I had to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the film's release in 2003 (can you tell I dig dinosaurs?). I christened it 'The Chaos Theory Cake' because it was a choc fudge cake, with buttercream in the centre which was also jam packed with all sorts of random jelly sweets and pick and mix. Then the whole thing was covered with ganache and then I made the fondant logo for the top, it was a bit wide and had to be supported by cocktail sticks! But, it was most delicious.




Hmmmm. Buttercream plus chocolate equals double tasty !

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But, not to stop at one magnificant creation, Polly then went on to also recreate the Jurrasic park jeep:



Profile

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Side

In her email, Polly very helpfully outlined the creation of the Jeep:

The Jurassic Park Jeep was a basic choc sponge covered in fondant with decals that I printed onto rice paper using my inkjet...yup I was amazed it worked too though I'm not sure they were strictly edible they looked good! It wasn't the tastiest sponge I ever made but it looked damn spectacular.

Damn spectacular indeed! Those Liquorice wheels look good enough to out-run a confectionery T-Rex to me!

See you Wednesday, where I shall be showcasing another of Polly's creations !

Apologies and technical difficulties... missing posts last week

Dear reader I apologise.

Last week Wednesday and Friday, where there should have been geekcake posts, there were none.

I trusted that Bloggers 'schedule' post ability would work as described.

That'll teach me.

Still I believe I've fixed the issue now, and tonight's post *should* come off without a hitch.

Monday's post to follow in mere minutes....

MORTAL COMBAT!!?!

Another Quick one tonight folks....

Test Your Might!



What a great ten year old Birthday cake !Found over at Flickr on the account of A-Treat
See you Wednesday!

iPod Geekcakes.

At mere seven years old, the iPod is the most well know portable branded MP3 player on the market.

This time line of the product evolution makes interesting viewing. Just to put it into some perspective, Google celebrated its' ten year old birthday this year.

I am not sure if it's the iconic silhouette adds, or the introduction of video playback , or their seamless photograph display, or just the Apple aesthetic, that makes it market leader..,

What I do know is that many an Apple/iPod loving geek chooses the familiar design to turn into geekcakes.

Enjoy!

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Over at the Ambermac's blog, are full instructions on how to make this quick beauty (complete with Britney playlist):

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I found this shuffle over at The tech blog Gizmondo:

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This one was created by the Pastry Chef Anne Heap over at The Pink Cakebox:



Every part is edible, even the earphones.

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Finally this amazingly detailed iPod Touch can be found over on icruise's Flickr pages
(even thought the icons make it look more like an iPhone to me )

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Thats all for this week. See you Monday .

Apologies no post tonight. However, on Friday...,

iPod cakes :D

See ya Friday

Motherboard Geekcakes

The humble motherboard. Backbone of all computing devices everywhere, from the humble calculator to Nasa vehicles.

The (compact) motherboard as we know it today, only became possible during the late 80's. Only then, did it became possible (and economical) to fit the necessary microprocessors all onto the same flat architecture.

Wikipedia describes it thus:

The motherboard is the central or primary printed circuit board (PCB) making up a complex electronic system, such as a modern computer. It is also known as a mainboard, baseboard, system board, planar board, or, on Apple computers, a logic board, and is sometimes abbreviated casually as mobo.

Chorltan sent a picture to the TG Daily tech blog, of the cake that his wife made him for his birthday.



"My wife very cheekily baked me a motherboard cake for my birthday (sad, but true).
Sad? Methinks not! True geeklove I say :D

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Over at the  Craftster forum, a member called 'letuescarpe' explained how she made her own motherboard birthday cake for her boyfriend:

This is kind of a cartoon representation of a motherboard. I wandered the candy aisles of the grocery store and CVS [US grocery chain] picking up different items to use. I got some wafer cookies for the RAM slots, an After 5 mint for the Intel chip... Rolos turned out to be especially useful.

Considering she seemingly picked the candy at random, I think she did a wonderful job. A very sweet rendition of a mobo if you ask me.

That's all for tonight.  See you Wednesday.

Another Rubik's Cube Geekcake

Hi all.

Just a brief post this Friday (apologies)

Another Rubik's Cube Cake.



Original source Flickr.

Unfortunately I do not have any creation details for this one. But it does look like a marvelous chocolatey M&M's creation.

See you all Monday

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, questionable geekcake

Occasionally I come across a well made geekcake and have to think long and hard about whether or not to post it here.

Why?

Sometimes the original link site has material not family friendly. I have tried to make sure all my posts and linked sites are suitable for all. I think the topic of cake should always be all inclusive !

Sometimes the topic of the cake is something I just don't understand the logic behind - I found a topless Lara Croft cake once, and no I'm not providing the link. :D

Sometimes the inspiration for the cake is - well shall we say adult themed - like the Legend of the Overfiend cake I once found, and no I'm not posting the link to that one either. :P

Today's cake, is none of the above, but I do question the wisdom of making such a cake for a 4 year old.

Originally found on Geekologie

Grand Theft Auto ^(TM), is a well crafted, multi-series console game which deals with adult themes. It's always deal with adult themes. The creators revel in thier ability to make the game as edgy as they like with no fears of upsetting their intended adult audience.

The games official website frontpage has looped welcome messages. Some examples of which are:

Welcome to Liberty City: A social experiment gone terribly wrong.
Welcome to Liberty City: Where the American Dream goes to die
Welcome to Liberty City: Criminals and Degenerates welcome
Welcome to Liberty City: The center of the known universe, for egomaniacs
Welcome to Liberty City: Overpriced real estate in a cultural wasteland
Welcome to Liberty City: Great to visit, even better to leave

The "hot coffee mod"  caused a controversy in 2004,  but in reality the 'cut scene' did not siginificantly deviate from the style of authorised game play.

Please don't misunderstand me, I have no problem with adults playing any GTA game. The 
Video Game Rating Content system of all participaing countries seems to largely work, but it is deinately not a game for 4 year olds.!

Still, an most excellant geekcake don't you agree?

See you all on Friday !

"A Long time ago, in a galaxy far far away".. Starwars Geekcakes

Ahh Starwars. The original trilogies are fondly regarded by an entire generation of Geeks. Star Wars, first release in 1977, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back,  first released in 1980, and Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, released in 1983

The saga of Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, Yoda, and other unforgettable characters inspires lots of geekcakes, and below are what I think is a choice selection:

Firstly, Adam and Rae loved Starwars so much that they decided their wedding cake should be  a chocolate Jabba-The-Hut. 

Found via greatwhitesnark.com 

Of all the characters that you could make into cakes I would have thought that Jabba was the most un-appealing figure, but this cutout section shows the chocolately goodness. 

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Over at Confectionary Delights, the talented cake creator Michele, has created  a cakey tribute to the scenes depicting Han Solo frozen in Carbonate:

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Finally (and only because this post is getting to be on the longer side):  

Yoda!

Also originally found via the greatwhitesnark blog

The torso is cake covered with buttercream, and dressed with fondant clothing, arms, and feet. The ’skull’ is made of “brown crunch,” which is like Rice Krispies Treats. But… brown. Fondant makes up the features of the head, including those distinctively-Yoda-ish ears.

The creator has her own blog which gives you step by step instructions on how to create your own Yoda cake here:

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The new trilogies: The Phantom Menace - 1999,  Attack of the Clones - 2002, and Revenge of the Sith - 2005, have  not inspired any geekcakes that I've been able to find, but there must be some out there, and if I find any I shall be sure to share them with you.

See you Wednesday!

Boy Wizard Geekcakes

The Wikipedia for Harry Potter, opens by saying: 

Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by British Author J.K. Rowling.

It's a simple statement, but it doesn't *quite* cover the fantasy phenomena that is Harry Potter.  

Seven novels, one (to date) spinoff novel, five films (at time of writing), twenty video games, one theme park (due to open in 2009), one proposed musical and almost enough merchandising to challenge the star wars commercial juggernaut. None too shabby considering the first book was only published in 1997.

Oh - and  two most excellent cakes as found on Flickr.  The first is by debbiedoescakes, and the second is by whiplashgirlchild. Check out both of their Flickr galleries for more cake art.

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Thats all for today. See you again on Friday.

Geekcake cookies and cupcakes: Dice, Magic The Gathering and Guitar Hero!

Last week I received a lovely email from a lady called Renee who runs the The Domestic Scientist blog. I shall let Renee describe herself in her own words:

"I’m not a housewife, I’m a domestic scientist!

And a huge dork."

The Tag-line of her Blog is "Mad Scientist with a Hint of Nutmeg". That is the kind of Mad Science I can definitely endorse. So without further preamble, I am honoured to share with you some of Renee's creations.

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First up: D20 cookies.



Remember, D20s are not just for D & D.
Many other systems use them as well...

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Next we have some deliciously realized Magic The Gathering* Cookies:



Hmmm. Tasty land.




Hmmm. Volcanic icing.

* If you have no idea what MTG is, then this wikipedia page, should start you on the way to learning you everything you never knew you needed to know. This is the official catalogue of all printed cards... evah.

In short it started out as a Collectible Card game (or CCG for short), and is now an online game, (similar to WOW) and is pretty much its own mini self sustaining gaming industry.

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And finally... Guitar Hero cupcakes!



Remember, all the instructions for creating your own MTG or D20 cookies, or Guitar Hero Cupcakes can be found over at Renee's blog: The Domestic Scientist

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That's it for today. See you Wednesday.

Slayer geekcake!

Aaaah, Buffy*. Is there a geek out there who doesn't know of your vampire slaying influence on popular entertainment?

Originally airing from 1997 until 2003, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series seems to be Marmite TV for geeks. People either seem to love it or hate it, but everyone is aware of it.

Up until a few days ago, I had not seen even one Buffy geekcake in all my image searching, and then the Flickr group Special Day Cakes produced this crafted piece:


Check out the Flickr link above for a nice gallery of (mostly non geek) cake, but one lovely Tardis

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*If you don't know what the TV series was all about, this link should help, and here is the Wikipedia entry.

That's all for today folks. See you Monday, when I have some exceptional cookie treats to share with you ..

six, I say .., SIX Halo geek cakes !

As I've been building this blog, I have noticed that certain geek subjects seem to draw out the creative cake-makers out there.

Consoles are popular presumably because they are square/rectangular, and therefore easy to ice. Daleks also seem to inspire the cake makers. Mario and associated characters seem to draw out those who most want an icing challenge, and sometimes the dedication of the Star Wars cake-making fans has to be seen to be believed.

One thing has surprised me though, and that is the seeming popularity of Halo( 1,2 and 3) cakes.

The Halo symbol is a tricky thing to reproduce normally let alone in icing, and the Chieftain / Helmet shapes don't lend themselves easily to cake baking, yet time and time again, when I search for geekcake I find Halo yumminess on display.

So now, without further rambling, I present to you my (current) six most favorite Halo geekcakes.

Enjoy.

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Someone cares for Jason enough to not only make him this cake,
but work his face into the picture too!
Found on Flickr

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This intimidating creature is a Chieftain rendered in cheesecake!
Found over at the Layers of Love blog.

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The Mum Loves Cooking blog describes all the steps needed to create this chocolately beauty:

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Again over at Layers of Love, someone lucky called Nate gets a special Master Chief cake:

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From kotaku.com A wonderfully shiny Helmet cake:


Created at a local Bakery to order, the ingredients were not specified beforehand. Apparently Once the owners could bear to eat it, they discovered the Chief had Rice Krispie treats for brains!

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Finally this Flickr creation is so white it's almost magical:



Thank you for Jean-Luc David over at Flickr, for sharing pictures of that with the internet
That's all for now see you Friday!

The only ever accidental Geekcake?

Occasionaly I come across a cake and don't really need to know the story behind it. It's much more fun to image. I would guess in this instance, that the text required for icing was made via a web form with broken code. Code which the bakery mistook for the actual icing request...,



Accidental Geekcake?

Unfortunately I am not sure what language the code errors are in.

See you Wednesday when I have a larger than averge post planned..,

Bzzt! Operation Cake

Ahh. I have fond memories of playing 'Operation' when I was little.

A battery-operated game of physical skill that tested players' hand-eye co-ordination, it was really just a themed wire-loop electrical game. Surprisingly the game first went on sale in 1965, and is still going strong today, thanks to the Hasbro company.

I found this very faithful cake rendition of it over at The Cake Fairy Gallery.


It was always trying to extract the wishbone which caught me out.

Have a good weekend all and see you Monday.

Cupcakes Galore! (Oh my)

Naomi Henderson is a cupcake artist, who seems to have an affection for creation small edible cups of cake glee.

I discovered her, when I stumbled across a full interview with her over on the Cupcakes Take The Cake Blog. Naomi has an extensive Flickr album (over 150 cakes!) which can be seen here. I especially like the Space Invaders.

Here for your delight is a brief glimpse at some of the geekier cupcakes:

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Barron Geenback never looked so Tasty

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Hmmm icing Clouds

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Wakka Wakka Wakka

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See you Friday!