Camera Cake

Every cake has a story behind it. Some cake stories are more interesting than others. This one, though began relatively simple, turned into quite the tale.

My roommate requested I make her birthday cake, and requested a white cake with vanilla buttercream, and no fondant. It sounded simple enough, and I decided on making the cake into a camera, because she is into photography and searching camera cake showed me some designs that did not seem to tricky to pull off. So her birthday was today, but the party was yesterday, and I had the cake all baked on Monday. I planned to decorate it either Tuesday night or Wednesday afternoon. I did not get the chance Tuesday, so Wednesday it would be!

Wednesday comes. I go to my early morning classes, and am on my way to my lunch break, something unexpected comes up. After a trip to the emergency room and 8.5 hours later, the patient (not me, I was fine) is safely back home and I have spent a good thirteen hours of my day away. I'm tired, behind on everything, not in the greatest cheer, and really late for the party already, and I was supposed to bring the cake. I didn't want then to go cakeless any longer than necessary, and I knew today would be an even longer day - more like 15 hours, so I had to get the cake done late last night.

So of course I was in a rush and losing patience, but despite this I think the cake turned out all right. Due to my rush though, I was unable to capture a quick photo before the cake had candles stuck into it. 

The cake is simply an 8x8 inch square cake, cut into two rectangles that are turned on their sides and sandwiched together for the camera base. Then I used a round cookie cutter to cut out a lens, and I cut a top shutter out as well, and still had some more cake left over. You can get a lot from a small cake. I frosted all of this in my signature vanilla buttercream, then added some detail in brown. I have never really seen a white camera like that, but white frosting was requested, and is much more natural looking for cake nonetheless. Anyways, the reason for the long story was really to explain that this cake is not nearly as polished as I would have liked it to have been - as I definitely did not have time for a crumb coat to set before adding a second coat, though I do really like the design concept!