Shadow Boxing

Here is another retirement cake for The Husband's Chief. It was supposed to look like a shadowbox that is generally presented to the retiree. The stripes ended up being a bit large, so the "box" ended up looking very crowded without having a great variety of items in it.

Here is a detail of the ribbon rack. I meant to have a picture of The Husband's actual ribbon rack to compare, but he hid it somewhere.

Dog tags.

Coins. The Husband has a whole mess of coins that he displays on his desk. I was lucky enough to find this chocolate mold that was in the shape of the Air Force seal. It is quite detailed, but is a little hard to see in chocolate.

I placed a couple of them on the top of the cake, and ran them around the edge of the cake. I made them in white and dark chocolate for that.


Apparently it went over quite well.

Hail to the Chief!

Another cop cake.

This time a retirement cake for The Husband's Chief's retirement BBQ.


Since I already did a Defensor Fortis cake for the same crowd last month, I thought I would go a slightly different route.

MUST. PRACTICE. PIPING. WORDS. I need better frosting handwriting.

While I did go with a small flash, it was not the main image. I was thinking about making the Security Forces badge, but it is a little too complex for me to make in fondant.

And on the other side, the current Air Force logo. Step into the blue.....


Enjoy your retirement Chief!

May the Force be With You

The Air Force that is.

The week of May 10 was National Police Week. The Husband a Security Forces member, technically a cop. They had a BBQ to cap off a week of events here on the base.

I volunteered to bring the cake.

I truly wish that my spacial recognition was a bit better. There was so much improvement that could have been made with my spacing of the writing. But dark blue icing on white, there is no going back.

This is the patch or flash that all the Security Forces members wear on their snappy blue berets. This part came out quite well I think.

Promotions

We have a good friend who was recently promoted, and I was asked to make the cakes for his after party.

First I made a traditionally decorated cake. Kind of plain, chocolate cake frosted in buttercream.

The second cake was a little more personal to the promotee. He has a habit of greeting everyone by yelling "WHAT'S UP CLOWN?!?!". I think The Husband actually yelled "Way to go CLOWN!" at the promotion ceremony. Anyway, I made a clown cake for him.

It's wearing boxing gloves because he also threatens to "fight" everyone.

This cake is rainbow, covered in buttercream and fondant. I had a little trouble with the fondant on this one (as usual) and ended up having to cover several trouble spots with the stars.

I also created some chocolate coins for him to give out at his ceremony. Many high ranking military members have personally minted challenge coins that they give out. Chances are our peer group will be unlikely to have coins of their own, but a promotion of this level is still a significant milestone in an Air Force career. Why not have a coin for this event? I made some of these for The Husband when he promoted as well.

I dont have a picture of it, but I took an old Crown Royal bag and altered it to say "Clown Royal", and put the coins in it for him to hand out.

It's great to have a theme to go with.

81st Fighter Squadron change of command

Spangdahlem is home to the 81st fighter squadron. They fly A-10 Thunderbolts, quite possibly one of the coolest planes ever.

In late May I was asked to make some cakes for a change of command party. The only guidelines I was given was that one of them should have the squadron patch on it.

I barely managed the patch.

Here is a picture of the actual patch for comparison.

I also made a plain cake with a panther paw on it, since their mascot is the panther. Their colors are also black and yellow.


For the third cake, I thought it would be great to have a representation of an A-10. This is what I ended up doing.



The colors are a bit off because I had to adjust them since the tablecloth was so dark.
I used a paper model I found on line (I can't find the site now, why didnt I bookmark it?!?), which was the majority of the work. There were eleventybillion pieces to cut and assemble.

Each of these cakes are white, with buttercream frosting.

Here is a shot of all of them together. There were surprisingly few complications.