One of the cutest couples that I have the pleasure of knowing are Drew and Val so I was delighted when Val contacted me to make a surprise cake for Drew's 30th birthday. Drew is an avid athlete and triathlon competitor.
When Val told me she wanted a triathlon themed cake, I immediately knew it would be a challenge. As I always do, I looked up ideas on Google and I took much of my inspiration from Pink Cake Box's Ironman Cake (Pink Cake Box has an awesome blog. I check it daily. You should too).
My main concern was the bicycle. When I did a search online, I saw plenty of... how do I say... really shitty looking gum paste bikes on cakes. So I was worried that I couldn't pull off any sort of decent looking bicycle on my own cake. What I ended up doing was using angel hair pasta as the spokes on the wheels and glued each strand of pasta onto a disk of gum paste. I modeled each piece of the frame and then attached them together on the cake. Most of the gum paste work (all the heads, the swimmer, the legs on the runner) were done several days ahead to allow drying time. On each tier I used a grass piping tip (Wilton #233) to make green shoots of grass and added chocolate rocks.
The inside of the cake was white cake with cinnamon buttercream.
Cinnamon Buttercream
4 egg whites
1 1/4 cup sugar
3 sticks butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
In a bowl of a stand mixer, combine egg whites and sugar. With the bowl set over a pot of simmering water, whisk egg whites until sugar has dissolved and mixture is warm to the touch. Remove from heat and with a whisk attachment, whisk mixture on high for approximately 6 minutes until glossy stiff peaks form. Change to a paddle attachment and on medium speed add butter a few tablespoons at a time. When the mixture begins to look like it is separating turn the mixer to medium-high speed and continue to beat until buttercream comes together. On medium speed, add vanilla and cinnamon. Mix until combined. Reduce speed to low and continue mixing for another minute to get the bubbles out. Makes about 4 cups of buttercream.
