Remember that last post? The one about us and the picture and the cake and the picture and the ninety odd pounds of cake? Well!! We did it. We made it. It's gorgeous. But, before you get to see the picture in all it's glory you're going to have to settle down, get comfy and learn how we did it. So? Are you comfortable? Yes? Then let's begin.
My name is Niamh Geraghty and I was asked to get involved with Dr. Sketchey's and The Doorway Gallery by producing a piece of edible art. Mmmmm, I thought to myself, yeah, that sounds like fun. So, as I am wont to do, I ran it by Ger, she of Cake My Day fame and my usual partner in crime. As, she too liked the sound of it, I threw my net out a bit wider and soon I had a team in place. They were and are:
Geraldine - Cake My Day
Karen - Bake Cake Create
Agatha - Agatha Cakefield Avenue
Dawn - Dawn's Custom Cakes99
Trish - The Cupcake Store
Aoibhean - Little Cake Co.
Breda - The Ribbon Shack and, last but not least
Anne Geraghty - Cakes, Glorious Cakes.
Team in place it was time to stop ringing and worrying and put my idea into play.
My idea? Ah, to make a cake, a big cake, 50 cakes in fact. A cake all about Dublin. I had nine bakers lined up, I just needed another 41. That was fun. My final baker to come on board was the wonderful Karen Smith Jepson. She reminded me only the other day that she was the very last person I asked. Which is really interesting to me as she was involved in the original project, the very one that inspired me.
A year or so back, 50 bright bakers, came together to recreate Starry Night by Van Gogh to celebrate his birthday. They each, all 50 of them (world wide) each took a portion of the picture and recreated it from a sugar medium. You can read all about it here and I think you should. It's a beautiful piece.
There I go again, off on a tangent.
So, with 50 bakers lined up we were good to go.
We, however, needed an image of something that said 'Dublin' to us so I opened it out to all the bakers and asked them to suggest pictures that they thought would look great as a large cake. They came in thick and fast and I decided that, actually, I was going to make an executive decision and pick the image I loved best. Funny thing is, the image was one that had come in a few times. 'From Croke Park to the Aviva' by Simone Walsh. Vibrant and gorgeous and there wasn't a part of that painting that I hadn't wandered through at some point in my life. I got in touch with Simone and she gave us her permission to use the image. I think she was intrigued by what I was trying to do.
Trish had the image blown up, my lovely husband measured it and cut it (oh, never EVER measure with a fabric measuring tape. That 1cm that you cut off? Yeah, that's a really important centimetre). Geraldine was charged with sending everyone on our list their image. All, barring mine, were done randomly. I created a grid and filled everyone's name in, here and there, and then wrote numbers e.g. a1, a2 right up to 10e on the back of my cut pieces of paper. Then it was just a matter of matching the code with the relevant name and posting.
Okay, so why wasn't my piece random? It was my gig! I wanted to do something I really loved yet knew if I took the stacks (which I grew up alongside those who know me well would know I er, cheated. Instead I took Poolbeg, I have many happy memories of walking that pier with my mam and dad.
I went on holidays. Fun in London (baby).
When I got back we set about working out how it was going to work. Medium to use, height etc. Then, one night, the early hours of a morning in fact, I woke up in a panic. I rang Ger (us cake makers can do that you see. We're all on facebook and can see who is unfortuante enough to be still up working at 2am)and said "the other bakers, the starry night ones .. . theirs was digitally blended!!! They didn't have to assemble a pysical cake. GER!! THEIR CAKE NEVER MET ANY OF THE OTHER CAKES" Ger did what she always does, when I ring in a panic, and told me to breathe. Not Calm Down, which is a terrible thing to say to someone, but breatheeeeee. I did. She said we could do it. I beleived her and fell asleep.
Now cake makers can be a contrary lot. We, well some of them, like things to be very precise. I do too but I'm not very good at it. Despite explaining that 3" was the same as both 75mm and 7.5cm we still had height variences. Mine included. My piece ended up on a strip of sugar paste, on a cake card and then on a foam core board to get it to the requisite 3" high. Ger wasn't much better and well, some were wide, short, too long, waaaay to high and some very, very stubby indeed (isn't that right Breda?).
We weren't aware of the issues we.d have regarding sizing until it came to be assembled and sure, it all worked out in the end.
What kept me going, as I can't speak for the others. was the rush I got whenever someone posted a picture of their finished piece. The colours! The techniques! The many, many questions on what shade of blue so and so was using. In the end we told everyone to just enjoy it and do it however they saw fit. And they did.
Of course there was a deadline and cakes started to arrive at mine, Ger and Karen's houses and we were surrounded by chocolate cake. Heaven. I met up with most of the girls last Monday and ended up coming home with a car full of boxes. Each box contained a cake and I promised, faithfully, Agatha and Geraldine that I wouldn't begin assembling it all until they came over the next morning.
I can't keep promises like that. I couldn't help myself. I just had to see if, say, mine lined up to the one next to it. And sure, when it did, would it line up with the one underneath it? It did!!!
Before you knew it I had assembled every piece I had, posted photos of it, rang Karen and squealed down the phone about how bloody brilliant the whole thing looked. I also asked that no one tell Ger what I had done. Forgot she had facebook on, she arrived, with the frame and another 20 cakes an hour later and gently yelled at me about how I was one of those ones who couldn't walk past a Christmas present without squeezing it.
I said, okay, you're right. I'm a bad person. We'll do nothing more until tomorrow. Yeah, that didn't happen. She too got excited and before you knew it we practically had the thing built and were standing on chairs, looking down at it, hugging each other. We rocked it.
It was so hard to go asleep that night. Was wound up and thrilled at how brilliantly it was all coming together.
Next day, Tuesday 17th September, was the deadline for all pieces to be in so we could assemble it. A friend of Gers offered to make our frame and we took him up on it. The size of the frame brought home how big this piece was going to be.
At noon Ger and Agatha arrived. They started lining the box frame and I began making lunch before running out to do the first of my school runs, shouting over my shoulder "don't start putting it together until I get back". Of course, whilst I was out they started putting it together which meant I arrived to two slightly worried cakers. Due to the nature of the piece some cakes were slightly wider or longer than they should have been. This was fine when we'd assembled it on the counter last night but when it started going into the frame all those milimetres added up to a couple of centimetres which added up to 10 cakes that weren't fitting into our frame. This meant they, I ran away again (thank God) to do another school run) had to shave, and I do mean shave, millimetres off every other piece. It was nerve wracking for them and there was chocolate everywhere.
When I came back from that school run I found Karen in the mix, sorting out the frame and the shaving and Aoibheann and Nicola working on Aoibheann's piece.
Aoibheann. She rang me in a panic on Monday night. She thought I was Oscar answering the phone and, upon realising I wasn't, said "You know how Ger says 'Breathe'? I need you to breathe!" It turned out her piece of the image had gotten lost, we're blaming the husband, and she couldn't make her image up. I had taken tonnes of photos of each persons image, front and back, but couldn't find them on the computer. I recommended she make her cake and, the next day, come over and place her piece where it should go and, using the surrounding cakes as a guide, do it then.
It worked. She did a fantastic job. Herself and Nicola were so funny doing it. Oh, and I spun a line about how Aoibheann had deliberately not done her piece until the last minute so that we could have one piece that we could trim to whatever size we needed to insert as a last cake. Sometimes I can come up with great stories in a heartbeat.
It took 5 hours to assemble it, 6 cake makers and 6 boys, a lot of shaving and cutting of cake, a fair bit of swearing, one accident and, before you knew it, we were all cheering and laughing and staring in awe at what we had put together.
In about two hours it's leaving my house, I will be sad to see it go(although looking forward to eating at the kitchen table again) as I have loved practically every minute of this project. I certainly couldn't have done it without Agatha, Dawn, Breda, Ger, Karen, Anne, Aoibheann or Nicola but I definitely couldn't have done it without these gorgeous people, my fabulous, wonderful, brilliant, clever cake making friends. I salute you my friends, it has been a joy (mostly, cackle) and I look forward to working with you all again. Be very, very proud of yourselves. What you did? It's bloody brilliant.
Introducing, Left to Right.
Grainne, Darina, Karen B, Marisa, Agatha, Dawn, Karen, Aileen, Deirdre and Nadi.
Aisha, Amy, Ellen, Karen J, Nicola, Karen K, Anne, Ger, Kelly and Philip
Janette, Rebecca, Aoibheann, Gillian, Susan, Bronagh, Valerie, Bernie, Barbara and myself.
Hannah, Laura, Suzanne, Breda, Helen, Tara, Emily, Tanya, Jean and Carol.
Sandra, Trish, Karen McH, Jenny, Caroline, Jenny D, Louise, Yvonne and Marian.
Thank you. It was a pleasure getting to know those of you whom I hadn't had the opportunity to meet before. Loved it.
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