Chicken Love: The Cake

Strange name for a post, yes? Well to give you a little background, my son Yusuf is now the very happy husband of a very gifted children's book illustrator who goes by the nickname of Chicken Girl. They got married in a private ceremony this past Wednesday on a beach in St. Thomas, and had the reception here in NY yesterday. Jannie, my new daughter-in-law, nicknamed him Math Boy, as he was working for his PhD in Mathematics when they met, although he has since completed it (my son the doctor!).

Anyway, Chicken Girl and Math Boy met almost exactly 5 years ago on the corner of Houston and Mulberry Streets, and on their third anniversary of meeting, she created this illustration as an anniversary card for him. When we were discussing the details for the reception nearly a year ago, she said that the only thing that she really wanted was a chicken cake. Although I had not done any cake decorating in many, many years, and even then just a bit of dabbling, I offered to take on the challenge. I decided to use her own artwork, which I found on her blog, as inspiration for the cake. And so began several months of studying and practicing fondant cake decorating, all self-directed, using books, TV shows, the web, and a terrific DVD. This is the result:

Here's a better look at the chickens. I think if you click on it you can see it bigger:
These are pictures I took while it was still in my apartment, and not very good ones at that. When we set it up at the restaurant, I put some Belgian chocolate seashells on the sand to make it look, well, more beach-y. Here's a picture of them cutting the cake:

I had a lot of fun making this, but the very best part of it was seeing Jannie's face when she saw it for the first time yesterday. She agreed from the start to let me surprise her. She had absolutely no idea what I was doing, except that it involved chickens, and her trust in me touched my heart. I am indeed a very blessed and happy mother, and mother-in-law!