Settlers of Caketan

As is traditional, I decorated a birthday cake for my little brother with a thing that he loves. Last year, I was super-lazy and just plastered the cake with these (admittedly both adorable and delicious) 8-bit Mario candy strips, so this year I decided to try something overly ambitious that just barely managed to stay together.



See, that terrifying orange structure that looks like it is going to slide apart at any moment is a city piece from The Settlers of Catan. I have placed it at the intersection of three resource hexes, namely ore (purple rock candy), bricks (red licorice nibs) and wheat (toasted coconut haystacks, made with yellow-tinted white chocolate). The cake is carrot and the frosting is cream cheese, which are delicious, but hardly ideally suited to cake sculpture; this is why on all those television shows their so-called cakes are composed almost entirely of fondant and molded rice krispie bar. Still, everyone enjoyed it, even though I had to explain it again to every new wave of arrivals.

(Danny's real birthday isn't until Thursday, but we observed it over Memorial Day weekend since Danny and several of his friends were in town.)