OMG! That's an iPhone cake? LOL!

A couple of months ago, a friend at work sent me a link to a picture she had found on Pinterest (believe it or not, I have never been on Pinterest. I also don't have a Twitter account, and I barely check my Facebook. Oh, and I still don't know what tumblr is. Yeah. I guess I'm "lame" like that). It was a bunch of cute-as-a-button iPhone cupcakes, arranged in a grid against a patterned background to suggest it was the screen of an iPhone, and each cupcake was a little app. If such technology could be cute, it was cute.

So that got me thinking that I wanted to do an iPhone cake for Sean's birthday. I looked online and googled iPhone cake images, and I was disappointed in the number of cakes that used edible paper and food-grade ink to just print the iPhone screen and lay it on top of fondant. I mean, I could rally on about how such cakes don't use artistry or skill, but really, it was more the fact that I don't have one of those printers, edible paper, or food-grade ink. So I totally couldn't do that even if I wanted to. Which I didn't. Even though it would be easier and more accurate than hand-shaped apps. Meh. Actually, I'm kind of glad that I don't have edible paper and food-grade ink. I might have caved to temptation.

I did find a couple that made little app buttons out of fondant, so I knew there was hope.

The truth of the matter, though, is that after a week of intense baking and my day job (not to mention that it was also a week of intense baking failures), I had kind of lost all enthusiasm for baking the cake. In fact, I might have backed out if I hadn't already sneakily arranged for Sean to be booked in a "meeting" at work with his team so that I could pounce on him with the cake and embarrass him with an off-tune chorus of "Happy Birthday".

For once, I used regular rolled fondant instead of making my own marshmallow fondant. I just didn't have the gumption. Because I work from home, I was able to make the cake and have it done and cleaned up before Sean got home--but only because it was a slow day at work.

And man alive...I honestly feel like this is my favorite cake to date. Really. I love it. First cake that I didn't want anyone to cut.

Cool, right? So cool, it's like I wasn't even the one to make it. It's got the Settings app cog wheel! Maps app! The Safari compass! Volume buttons on the side, the headphone jack and switch on top, and the charging point on the bottom! C'mon... if you have an iPhone, please tell me you can recognize a lot of these!

Oh, sure. There are things I would do differently. I would make the background a lighter color of grey. I would use less water to clean the powdered sugar off the fondant so that it wasn't so shiny (though it WAS less shiny after chilling out all night. These photos were taken approximately 30 seconds after completion).

And Sean was surprised, so that part of it was a success. He figured something might be going on when his team asked him to come into the meeting, but he didn't expect me there, or the iPhone cake of Awesomeness.

He gawked at it for a little bit, afraid to cut it--and gawking was fine, because everyone was crowding in to get pictures before it was destroyed.

"Well," he said, once he finally took the plunge, "at least it makes for good portion control. Who wants what app?"

(I got the photo album sunflower.)

I wonder if there's a niche market just for iPhone cakes...