Ace of Cakes Gets Lost!
February 15, 2009 Sunday Sweets are my weekly NON-Wreck features, the better to show how wrecky the Wrecks really are.
I frequently get asked if I've heard of or watch Ace of Cakes. Heh. Guys, I write a cake blog. If it's even remotely cake-related, I've probably heard of it. Safe cupcake amendment in Texas? Check. Cake puppet singing Karen Carpenter? Check. Ace of Cakes? Checkity check. And yes, I do love Duff and the gang. In fact, one of the few reasons I'm happy to have cable again (we went without for a few years) is that I can start catching up on all the episodes I've missed.
Anyway, I've been waiting for just the right Charm City creation to feature here on Sunday Sweets, and I think I've finally found it. Not only is it a cool cake, it also brings together two addictive shows: Ace of Cakes and LOST.
Check out what Duff & Co. created to help the cast of LOST celebrate their 100th episode:
Neat, huh? There's the computer terminal (probably with the famous numbers on it, but I can't quite tell), a suitcase, a gun, the whole cast, and of course my favorite: a four-pack of Dharma beer.
Hey, there's even a little crashed plane on the side! Nice. But, uh, guys? Shouldn't the plane be snapped in two, with the tail section on the other side of the island? Hmmm? ;)
Here's a nice detail shot:
And the big group shot with both casts:
All of these photos are from Jorge Garcia's blog, by the way. Be sure to check there for a few more photos not posted here, and many thanks to Rachel K. for being the first to tell me about it!
Reader Comments (66)
Love his show and something about him and his whole crew totally crack me up every time I watch him.
And of course even the ones that are "off" are spectacular.
I would love to buy a cake from him but they are way out of my price range and the fact that I'm in California kinda makes it impossible.
Thanks for featuring his cake on your blog, I was waiting to see one of his on here.
~Colleen (cyberrblue.wordpress.com)
I love this cake! There is a nice close-up pic of this in TV Guide and yes, the numbers are on the computer screen.
I think I can see Sayid!!!
I don't know, it looks a little out of scale to me. But I'd still eat it!
Angie (from over at www.HalfAssedKitchen.com)
I saw this on the latest issue of TV Guide a few days ago, but they didn't show the entire thing. It's awesome; love it!
Oh man, I love Lost! Best show on TV in my opinion. To see my two favorite things (cake and Lost) combined just makes me immensely happy.
Now that is a freaking cake! I love it! I could use something like that for my rock n' roll wedding! You are very talented at cake making! Great post!
That is fabulous! Especially love the cake-Hurley - spot-on!
wow, look at that detail.
cool!!
Sorry folks, but I have to admit I'm not a big ACE of CAKES fan. WAY too much touching of the frosting with bare hands. I swear on one show I saw someone brush a piece of hair out of her face and then go right back to molding fondant. I have to say that this is the show that has gotten me to gag whenever I think of eating fondant. To me eating one of their cakes would be like eating playdough (not in flavor, but in the amount of touching that has been done to it)
How awesome. I'm a major lost fan. I can't believe I missed this episode of Ace of Cakes....well, yes I can, I don't have cable, but still. LOL
Am I the only one who hates Ace of Cakes for their over use of fondant and how every cake just looks cartoony? I am always like so where is the cake? Can you eat that? I don't think you can eat that. And Duff is a cocky jerk.
Very cool!!
Here's my problem with Ace of Cakes: They're not really doing much with cake, are they? They're just making sugar sculptures. If it was called Fun with Fondant, I'd be more of a fan. But I agree with Lorelai, the thought of eating something that's been sculpted that much by sweaty human hands if pretty gross.
They didn't only make a cake for "Lost" while they were here in Hawaii. They also made a cake at Schofield Barracks (an Army post here) to honor the soldiers while they were here. It was a helicopter with working rotors and lights. We got to go see them in action and met Duff, Mary Alice and Geof.
I would hardly call most of what they do cakes (at least what is actually seen on the show). If you watch the show, they mostly use Styrofoam, pipes, wood, and fondant to do a lot of the showy "cakes". Cake, by the nature of its name, is cake; something you can eat. I am sure someone out there likes to eat cardboard with icing on it, but not me.
Here in Baltimore, there are dozens of bakeries that do excellent cakes with all the frosting you want, but there is only one CharmCityCakes. Their creations are crazy,unique, fondant covered wonders but they also taste great. And believe me, Duff is EXACTLY what you see on the show. (Most) everyone finds him to be adorable and crazy likable.
They really are incredible!
Yeah - maybe because I'm not a LOST fan, but I'm not feeling this cake either. I like Ace of Cakes though and could think of at least a dozen other cakes that I think are awesome.
I agree with the other poster, the scale is way off. People smaller than beer cans, plane even smaller than the people? And then all the people are just standing around on a cream base that is supposed to be sand I guess? I think I might have liked it better without the figures. Everything else works in scale - the computer, beer, suitcase, gun etc.
Ok, oh well - I do appreciate the effort that went into this. I do love Duff's cakes usually!
OMG, coolest cake EVER!!!! I love cake, Duff and Lost! It's a perfect world!
I love Lost, and this cake is awesome as usual.
I think Charm City makes gorgeous cakes, but I haven't seen them use frosting once. They have therefore never made a cake I would actually consider eating.
When they made the ear cake for that doctor and he cut into it, the cake itself looked very dry and crumbly.
While not a wreck, I certainly wouldn't call that a great success. Yes, it does what it is supposed to, but it is not attractive at all.
Awesome cake!
I love Sunday Sweets. It restores my faith in fondant, frosting and flair.
I guess I'm also in the minority of commenters here that don't like Ace of Cakes. I did really like it for a while in the first season. I would try to convince my friends to watch it and everything. Somewhere along the line I just stopped watching until one day a friend of mine called and asked why she never listened to me "because Ace of Cakes is awesome." I turned it on to watch with her and found that I had no idea why I liked it in the first place. Like the other commenters here have said, the cakes are really cartoony (except the Harry Potter one, that one was awesome...EXCEPT the stupid cat they randomly put in there!), there is never enough cake, I can NEVER believe how much people spend on them (it says on their website they require a MINIMUM $1000 order, so even the people that walk out with a cake that looks like a cartoon and will feed less than 10 people spent $1000 or more), and Duff comes across as a jerk (obviously I don't know him in real life, so I don't want to call him a jerk if that's only how he's coming across on tv).
Bleh.
I love Ace of Cakes. Almost everyone on that show reminds me of people I went to art school with.
Hooray, we finally made your blog! And for a good reason!
Thanks for posting the cake! I can't wait to tell everyone at work tomorrow. We had an amazing time in Hawaii and it was such a thrill to meet the Lost cast and crew.
Hey Biff, to answer your question, it was almost all cake. The island, computer, and suitcase were all completely made of cake. The water was poured sugar. Pretty much the whole thing except the support to hold up the tree and the coconuts was edible.
Thanks for the shout out!
xoxo
Mary Alice
Charm City Cakes
malice_AT_charmcitycakes.com
I *love* this cake!! Not only is it from Duff, it's a LOST cake!!! I love the little Hugo/Hurley figurine. Yea Duff and Staff for a super cool cake!!!
This is cool, but I'd like a Heroes-themed cake!
I want this as a wedding cake.
That doesn't make me an crazy Lost fan does it? Does it?!
I have to admit, even tho' the cakes are creative, beautiful, and sometimes genius... the all look kinda nasty. Like, I never see them bake an actual cake. Is it from a mix or from scratch? Do they do fillings like strawberry or lemon? Then they roll the fondant with their fingers... and I can't help but think it tastes like the sweat from their hands.
Which brings me to another point... who eats fondant? I mean, it looks good, but can you eat it? No. You gotta peel off the fondant first. There was one cake, the elephant one, where they just covered some Styrofoam to look like a pachyderm and then just cut of some sheet cake to spread around the base. That's cheating!
Don't get me wrong, I like the show. I know that traditional frosting has limitations and that fondant lends to endless possibilities. But just once, I'd like to see them bake an equally beautiful cake that looks good enough to eat, too.
Dear [deity of your choice], that's precious. I wonder if the cast members got to eat their fondant doppelgangers. (Tiny Sayid is adorably badass.) I love how creative the Charm City gang is.
For those complaining about the wonky scale: It's an artistic interpretation of a TV show in cake form, not an O-scale model train. What happened to your imaginations? Yeesh!
Also? Mary Alice drive-by! I luff her. (And Geof and Ben.) It's like a second-hand brush with fame. :)
I'm sorry, but this seems like a pile-of-toys style wreck.
I watch Ace of Cakes all the time and I have to say I also question how much of the cake is actually edible?! Today I was watching the show and they were making a Harry Potter cake...I saw a ton of styrofoam, wood, cardboard and of course a ton of fondant...so disappointing! I would love to see them make a cake made only of cake and decorated with frosting not fondant! Then I might be intersted in paying $1,000 for something that would be delicious!
I'd probably appreciate this cake more if I was a Lost fan, but considering I've never seen a single episode. . . Oh, well.
What really intrigued me was the article on Texas's safe cupcake legislation. I don't know if it's pronounced the same way as the candy company, but does anyone else see the irony in a nutrition professor with the last name of Nestle? Haha :D
They could just make me a Sawyer cake and I would be quite fine. Fine oh fine! LOVED this! Thanks for sharing!
Gotta love Duff! He's so very jolly. :)
I like the cake and I watch Ace of Cakes almost religously. But, I had to send an email to them and tell them they should (just for the sake of us watching) show them WASHing thier hands once in awhile. I agree that there is way too much playing around and touching their face, etc. and going right back to touching something they expect someone to EAT!
I just love love love Ace of Cakes. My dream is to get a Duff cake for some occasion.
I'm SO glad you featured them in Sunday Sweets. Now I think Duff needs to create a wreck just for the blog. You reading this Duff? *g*
Lost Ace of Cakes Cake! That is so cool! I think the little plane is suppose to be the drug dealers plane? I wonder if this episode has aired? I don't remember seeing it but I have missed a few Ace of Cakes lately.
Cross pollenating the tv and interwebby! CharmCityCakes is cool! But I am quite surprised the Millennium Falcon cake didn't make the cut before this one. THAT was amazing. And hell yeah! Mary Alice commented! Party on Garth!
I am in love!! We are Losties here @ this house and miss satellite bc of Food Network, so to see this- I'm on cloud 9! tfs!!
i like Ace of Cakes, I love LOST, but Duff reminds me of my ex- boyfriend. And that is not a compliment at all. The way he laughs is dead on. Its awful.
This is related to an older post, but I thought you might like to see this animated gif my friend ZS made:
http://www.barrylutz.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/blubblub.gif
Frightening, no?
I'm going to leap to their defense and say that that little plane is actually Kate's toy plane from the episode where she killed her childhood sweetheart in the car crash, not the crashed plane they were on. Yeah, I am that geeky abou the show. I love LOST! This is a fab cake!
My 2 ultimate TV shows: LOST and Ace of Cakes. I was super excited when I saw this on Jorge's blog. Plus, how sweet is it that Mary Alice commented! Thanks for posting this cake Jen, you made my day :)
This looks SO cool!!! I LOVE it!!! The Dharma Beer is my favourite!
That is one cool cake. Loving the characters! my favourite is Hurley. Seems a shame to eat it.
This is awesome. I didn't know Jorge Garcia had a blog. I have such a bizarre crush on that dude.
I really can't believe the anger people are feeling towards Charm City Cake's creations and feel the need to jump in.
Sure, it would be awesome if they could create super-intricate 3d models out of nothing but frosting and cake and therefore have everything on the board edible, but would you like to give it a try? Most of the things they make you *could not* make out of cake unless you had a million different support rods and such. Think of most of the things are really intricate caketoppers. You don't eat the little bride and groom, so why would you eat the dragon?
Also, frosting is simply ugly in 99% of the case. That's why the wrecks we see every day are almost always frosted, while the Sunday Sweets are almost always using fondant.
Furthermore you can eat fondant just fine, and if it's the right brand or homemade, it can actually taste pretty good. The reason you've heard you shouldn't eat fondant is that your bakery used a really low quality kind that tastes terrible *cough*Wilton*cough* and didn't want you to know and so told you it was inedible and should be peeled off.
Finnnnally, are you seriously complaining about them working the fondant with their hands? Have you never eaten freshly made bread or anything else made by someone else's hands?