Cake for a king!

It's 4:00am. Eyes wide open. Being awake at this absurd hour for the third night in a row must be a sure sign that I need to post a blog, eh? So heeeeere it goes!

Okay, so our "Cupcake Neighbor" is quite a genius when it comes to baking and decorating cakes (as you are about to see). When we spent the day celebrating Hari Raya with her family, she asked if I wanted to learn how to make kek lapis, to which my reply was a big ole heck to the YEEEEES! Kek lapis is a cake made of a bunch of thin layers. Some are chocolate, some are blueberry, and some are pineapple, but all keke lapis (that I've tasted so far) are Uh-maze-ingly scrumptious! See all the teeny tiny layers?

We set a date and and I was informed to show up at her house at eleven o'clock and we would spend all day baking kek lapis. Weel, at ten o'clock that morning she showed up at our house with an excited twinkle in her eye. "Sorry Keylee, I must cancel kek lapis today. I have make birthday cake for Sultan and his nephew!" Helllllooooo...That. Is. HUGE!! Ya see, it's kind of a big deal when it's the State Sultan's birthday, and actually considered a state holiday. Downtown is decorated in lights and certain stores and offices are closed for the day. Like I said, big deal.

A nephew of the Sultan was turning one year old as well. So we got started on that cake first. Theme being Elmo/Sesame Street...

Mix mix mix mix. This is not your ordinary mixer, all heavy duty and professional and such. And apparently NOT intended to be ran by yours truly. It's still a mystery how I managed to sling chocolate cake batter all over the wall. Leave it to the white girl :)

(oh by the way, this picture was taken before I choco-fied the wall;)

Th two silver pot looking things below are the ovens. People here typically don't have ovens at all, they mostly cook on a griddle or stove top. Even though there were two ovens, each only held one 12x12 inch cake at a time which had to bake for an hour...

With 8 cakes having to be baked for Elmo's base, we had a lot of waiting before it could actually be put together. So we got to work on the details of the cake...

DING! Finally all the cakes were out of the oven and ready to be put together. Then came the fondant, airbrushing, big letters, little letters, Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch, Grover, lots of rearranging, and at last Elmo. Viola!

Oh but the fun didn't stop there! More and more cakes went into the oven. You thought 8 cakes was a lot for the Elmo cake? Oh no no, 24, 12x12inch cakes. TWENTY FOUR. Mr. Sultan was planning on a big party turn out and lots of cake hungry guests I suppose. We actually started icing the cake at 12:30am...

We worked on that cake through night. and day, and in and out of weeks, and almost over a year, to where only the wild things are. Okay, not reeeeeeally. Hour, after hour, after hour past and we finally finished. My camera died, so I have no pictures of the work in progress. But here is a picture of the finished product!

I wish there were a better picture showing the how huge this 60kg (132lb) cake really was. We got the cake finished a whole 30 minutes before our 6:00am deadline! I arrived back home at 5:45am, got cleaned up, threw some (warm) clothes in a bag, and we hit the road to the Highlands for Thanksgiving! Talk about being sleepy, whew. But worth it all, nonetheless. :)