18 Year Old Male

Somebody tell me a cake harder to figure out what to do with, than one for a young man turning 18! Actually, his mom had all the ideas -- she wanted a cake to show what he wants most in life right now -- money (the gold coins), a license, a car, a credit card, a winning lottery ticket, more money, and a couple of other "unmentionables" that were put on the back of the cake. (Just use your imagination -- I'm not telling what's back there!)

The cake is half chocolate, half white. Iced in my new buttercream recipe that I've been experimenting with lately -- it's supposed to hold up in the heat much better than only-butter buttercream. It uses a bit of flour to stabilize the icing and keep it from melting, rather than Crisco. So far, everyone loves it. Of course, it's not really "heat tested" yet ... we're supposed to get freezing rain and not go above 32 degrees here for the first 3 days of next week. Oh well.

I started the creative process by Googling images for credit cards, TX license plates, cars and lotto tickets. Found a really awesome car picture that I put on the front of the cake, and that set the tone for the remaining color scheme -- browns, golds and silver. Printed the images out on photo paper, cut them out then slapped them down on freshly-made (and still sticky) fondant. Cut the fondant around the edges and applied them to the cake with a little water for glue. I especially love the license plate -- printed out a generic TX plate, then printed out the guy's initials and his age to fit properly on the plate, and stuck those letters and numbers over the ones that were already there.

The lotto tickets are stuck to the sides of the cake. The "18" and the balls-border are all fondant, either rolled in or painted with gold and silver luster dust. Same with the gold coins.

Oh and -- the whole cake is covered in chocolate fondant.