for·tu·i·tous. Adjective -- Happening by accident or chance rather than design, happening by a lucky chance; fortunate.
It wasn't my idea.
I wish it was, but it was a request from an event planner for an entirely different event. That's the way it always starts in the bakery business. Someone calls and asks us to make a cake.
She was interested in a cake to resemble the BCS Trophy.
I knew what it looked like. But not what it REALLY looked like. When you want to turn something like that into cake, you've got to pay a whole lot more attention to the details.
According to Wikipedia,
The trophy consists of a Waterford Crystal football affixed to an ebony base... The winning school retains permanent possession of the trophy, as a new one is awarded every year. The football portion of the trophy weighs approximately 8 pounds and together with the stand, it weights about 45 pounds and stands 34 inches tall...
In bakery talk, the *base* translates to stacked square cakes, which is pretty straight forward. The tricky part is getting the moulding details on the base right. And, of course, the crystal football.
We had a meeting about it and came up with some ideas.
Then nothing. They would get back to us.
So about a week later, when we got an entirely different call, it was all still very fresh on my mind.
This time we were asked simply to make a chocolate cake for a luncheon. To serve about 75 people. At the Mal Moore Athletic Facility. For the Alabama Football Program. About five days out, on February 1st.
Oh no, you don't want JUST a chocolate cake. We're gonna make something special.
And a few days, a full chocolate sheet cake, lots of ganache and buttercream, rice krispy treats, white modeling chocolate, lots of wooden dowels, and some glitter dust later... we had a most impressive cake.
It wasn't quite big enough to make the entire trophy. And it certainly wasn't going to be 34 inches tall. The finished product was about 12-inches square. The football standing on end (and on dowels) added about 10 more inches. And we took liberties with the details, simplifying the moulding and other details.
Getting to deliver the cake to the athletic facility was priceless. It's an impressive place, and I am not even a hard core fan.
Everyone was so nice, introducing themselves. I had my picture made with the real trophy (from 2009).
Our cake was set up in front of the HUGE multi screen television in the Football Recruiting Room. We surrounded it with Alabama-themed shortbread cookies, petit fours and lemon squares.
Photos were taken and tweeted by The Tuscaloosa News. It even made ESPN.
So, fortuitous (that means lucky) it certainly was.
I'm hoping we'll still get a chance to make the full size version. But this one can be made over and over, and would be affordable to the average customer wanting to serve 80 of his closest friends.
Roll Tide!
Comments