To boldly go...

...where yes, okay, lots and lots of cake decorators have gone before. But it's all good fun nevertheless.

Some weeks ago, I said to my husband, "So what would you like for your birthday cake, honey? Keeping in mind I'm going to have just finished a wedding cake, and I am so not going to be in the mood to do anything too full-on?" He said, "How about the Starship Enterprise?" I think he was joking. At any rate, my answer was "ha ha". But it got me thinking... Then my husband (who, by the way, thinks he is not a geek) announced that it had to be the original model, not the 1701-E or anything (because they are just soooo last week...) I started to wonder if it was possible to do sort of a half-hearted attempt without it just looking rubbish.

Then he said "Hey, what about a croquembouche?" I gave him the evil eye, and a choice: he could have a "normal" cake and churros at his party, or he could have a croquembouche. And no churros. He chose Option A. And "normal" for me meant, you guessed it, the USS Enterprise.

Anyway, here's the result - judge for yourselves! I'm sure that if I had devoted weeks of painstaking sculpting to this project, I could have made something a little more true to the original, but that just wasn't going to happen this time I'm afraid. So one evening and one Saturday morning later, this baby was ready to be beamed up. And everyone knew what it was. And my husband got to have his cake, and eat churros too - smiles all round.

(by the way, sorry for the dodgy pics - I forgot to take a photo of the finished cake before the party. You can't really see it at all in the photos, but the bridge section (ie the big round bit) was actually elevated a bit, to a) create a "floating" or "flying" effect, and b) because it's supposed to be higher up than the bottom section of the ship. The board was covered in black sugarpaste, dusted with silver lustre dust to look like distant stars.)