layered sheet cakes - too tacky?

[brown sugar]

i need to make a birthday cake for a 92 year young artist being celebrated at a local art fair with attendance of approximately 150 ppl.

i'm trying to come up with a nice cake that's not too wedding-ish. the idea suggested was to incorporate the artist theme, like a paint palette. my idea was to do a sheet cake w/ the artist tools made out of something else like molding chocolate or pastillage, but i keep coming back to the "is this tacky?" question. (although making the whole cake in the shape of a giant painter's palette could potentially be even tackier.) however, i was reminded that there will not be "professional" servers at the event (in a local park) so it would easier for the average person to cut & serve a sheet cake.

any comments or suggestions?

[kthull]

Maybe the 'giant-ness' of the painter's palette is what feels tacky. Perhaps if you stick with the idea of the tools made of chocolate, but keep them on the small side to serve as accent, rather than overdone, it could work. From your description, I recalled the Jacques Torres show where he does the painter's palette in chocolate and it was way cool.

Good luck. Share your pics when you're done!

[momoreg]

A palette could look cool as a cake shape. I would do a sheet cake with a smaller, palette-shaped cake on top. Keep the details to a minimum, and I don't see how it would look tacky, as long as your lines are clean. As far as cutting goes, that shouldn't pose a problem. Good luck!

[Headless Chicken]

Away from tackyness and a little to ellegance.

I was thinking of a wooden picture frame that you could make out of marizpan or pastillage. Do a smooth surface and use an old paint brush with dark brown food colouring (or some real strong esspresso) to create the wood grains. The center, a large marzipan sheet with a picture to your or the birthday boy's liking.

Roughly how big of a cake are we talking about? 25' or so?

[brown sugar]

Originally Posted by Headless Chicken

Away from tackyness and a little to ellegance.

I was thinking of a wooden picture frame that you could make out of marizpan or pastillage. Do a smooth surface and use an old paint brush with dark brown food colouring (or some real strong esspresso) to create the wood grains. The center, a large marzipan sheet with a picture to your or the birthday boy's liking.

Roughly how big of a cake are we talking about? 25' or so?

hmm i'm scared of making a 25' cake or anything else. í'm making a full sheet cake, well actually 2 half sheet cakes pasted together cuz i don't have a oven that large yet! thanks for the suggestions momoreg and kthull... i think i'm going wtih the smaller cake on top that's shaped like a palette. i briefly flirted with the idea of the frame, but now that you mentioned it i think i'll try to incorporate that as well. i have some leftover marzipan in the fridge. i'll let you know what happens. in the meantime, i have chocolate strawberries to make for thursday. whew! who thought i'd be so busy 2 weeks after finishing school?

[brown sugar]

the cake went over well. i created the palette from chocolate plastic. i used apricot preserves with some cornstarch and food coloring to simulate the paints. and marzipan for the paintbrushes and tube of paint.

my writing is a little crooked... but not too bad for my first big cake.

hmm... i'm trying to upload a photo of the cake but it says that it exceeds the quota by 1.09 MB. the file is only 7 KB! is it me?!

[momoreg]

It sounds pretty. I wish I could help you figure out how to post the picture, but computers are not my forte.

It's nice to hear your cake was a success.

[kthull]

If you're willing, e-mail me the picture (baker@sweetestobsession.com) and I'll post it.