A friend and co-worker asked me if I could make a Longbow Apache helicopter cake for her husband’s birthday since he used to work on them when he was in the Army. I tried to be as accurate as possible while still giving her as much cake as possible (which is why it is wider than typical) from the under-mount gun to the 3 exhaust vents on the back of each engine. Even the rotors spin.
I started with a wooden paddle and built up from there. The cake is a single chocolate 9×13 that I cut and stacked to make the necessary shapes, filled and covered with a French butter cream.
The engines are supported underneath with Popsicle sticks. The rotors are about 8 inches long gum paste. Everything is edible (gum paste or cake) with the exception of the toothpicks and aforementioned Popsicle sticks.
I spent 3 nights working on this cake for a few hours each juggling my day job and mentoring a high school robotics team each evening. Unfortunately when it came time to attach everything I was out of time, and still hadn’t made the royal icing for fastening (nor did I have powered sugar at home). Luckily my blender was able to turn some table sugar into powdered sugar with ease, but I didn’t have time to dye it properly.
When I brought her the cake she fell in love with it. Later she told me her husband was speechless when she brought it home to him. After regaining his words he started pointing out all the little details that I had spent so much time recreating. I was very happy to hear how much he enjoyed it… although now my other co-workers are trying to think of other crazy things I can tackle.
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