Rubik's Cube

This was the first cake that I made for someone I have never met before!  My brother-in-law's Aunt Linda, who lives out of state, is a fan of my cakes.  So when she was coming up here for a visit, she ordered a cake for her son Mitchell's 16th birthday.

The Rubik's Cube.  A cake to stir the hearts of math nerds everywhere.  (Just to clarify, I mean nerd in a good way).  And so of course I had to make my cake solveable.  At first I was just going to buy a Rubik's cube and use that as my model.  How much could it cost?

The answer is too much.  "Okay," I thought.  "No problem.  I'll just look on the internet."  Of course there are a million pictures of rubik's cube cakes and unsolved cubes.  But none of them showed all of the sides!  I am not enough of a math genius to just figure it out from the sides I could see.  And I really wanted to be ACCURATE.

Good thing I have a brother who IS a math genius.  He worked up a quick computer model that showed me what colors to put where.  Score!  (If you want the model, email me).

So - I made three 8inch square chocolate 2-layer cakes.  Each one went on a cake board.  I frosted them with chocolate buttercream.  I used a different recipe this time since I wasn't going to be piping anything.  I think I used the Wilton online recipe which halves the amount of shortening and adds butter instead.  Tastes much better.  I also used special dark cocoa to make it look darker.

Then I stacked the cakes so that the middle layer was turned.

Now I should have made the colored squares the night before, but I wanted to make sure the height was correct.  So I waited until the cakes were baked so I could measure them and make the squares the correct size.  But they didn't have enough time to dry and harden, so they were a little soft when I put them on the cakes.

Before adding the squares, I staked all three cakes with a long, sharpened dowel rod (sharpened by my helpful father, thanks Dad!).  It went through the cakes and the two cake boards, ensuring that they wouldn't fall over on the trip to the party.

Then, using my brother's model, I quickly added the squares using frosting to stick them on.

Now my pregnant sister was holding the cake on the way to deliver it and I was pretty nervous that some of the squares were going to fall off.  But the cake made it there in one piece, no repairs necessary!

And there you have it - the solvable Rubik's cube cake.