My son Paul is very interested in the human body. So, when it was time for us to plan his 6th birthday party, he said that he wanted a cake of the digestive system.
Once I got over the initial shock of his request, I started looking around for photos of similar cakes on the internet. There aren’t many, in case you were wondering. This meant that it was time to for me to get to work on a Digestive System Cake.
To get started, I pulled out my human body book, and drew a very basic sketch of the digestive system, from esophagus to rectum, on a large sheet of paper (basically, the same size as the cake I would be making). I then traced it onto cardboard, and cut out the cardboard. This would become my template.
The cake itself was a three-layer vanilla cake (recipe from Sylvia Weinstock’s book), with one layer of cannoli filling, and one layer of chocolate mousse filling (again, from Sylvia Weinstock’s book). I baked the cakes in 10” round pans (because that’s the biggest size I had), and then proceeded to cut out pieces of cake using the cardboard as my template. As you can see, most of the organs were made separately, and then I pieced them together. That was not fun.
The cake is covered in buttercream, dyed all different body-type colors using gel paste. I also mounded the buttercream on top to give the illusion of depth, so it didn’t look like a sheet cake.
Was it a lot of work? You betcha! Would I do it again? In a heartbeat!
LOVE IT!! I’m a doctor working on a GI ward… I may have to make one like this when I leave!!