Last year I made my dad a birthday cake on a magic theme, this year is his 80th birthday so once again I needed to create a cake with cards on it. I used an idea of an exploding parcel from the Planet Cake book but adapted it for my own purposes. Marion Frost's new Card set of Patchwork Cutters came in very handy too. Although you cannot see from the picture angle, each white ribbon has a club, heart, spade and diamond on it. I scanned a photograph of my dad 'Bob Ostin' as a young magician to add to this entry. He has written a couple of books, the first of which is dedicated to me and my brothers, so here I want to pay tribute to my dad and his contribution to magic over the years.
This cake was for a lady who loves going away on foreign holidays. It needed to be a pink and white cake with a model plane on it too. I decided to make a suitcase cake and modeled the plane on the Britannia colours. To bring those colours down around the cake I made some flip flops in red and blue then added pink and white flowers. I made Mexican paste for the straps as it is strong and also hardens quite quickly, supporting the straps with pieces of foam until they had hardened completely. The 'post' that goes between the toes is a short cylinder of Mexican paste with a piece of raw spaghetti inside inserted into the soles to provide the support needed to attach the straps to. I embossed a flower pattern onto the flip flops for extra detail and also modeled a bottle of suncream to fill space on the opposite side of the cake board. The luggage label is made from sugar paste then I piped on the message with blue Royal Icing.
