Cake of a nerdy, geeky, fantasy or sci-fi leaning are always a favourite of ours here at Stacked Cakes. Previously we have made a Dalek and the Tardis from Dr Who, R2D2 from Starwars, Teal'c and Stargate from Stargate SG1, the sorting hat from Harry Potter, a Kindle e-reader from Amazon and a Nintendo Entertainment System.

Last week's Mass Effect 2 Normandy SR2 cake was another cake in this fine tradition. The spaceship was quite a challenging shape with drooping wings and long thin body, but in the end these helped add to the "floating in mid air effect" of the cake.

Completed Normandy SR2 cake

Read on for some more details and photos of it's construction.

Carving and drilling the cake and base boards to take the supporting dowels

The base board, cake board and wings were made out of various thicknesses of MDF. The ship conveniently has a bulge towards the rear on it's underside which we choose to carve out of thick MDF and use as the mounting point for the support dowels. The cake board is cantilevered forward from it's two support dowels at the back leaving most of the cake floating in mid air.

Cake carved to shape on the base board

White chocolate mud cake was carved to make up the bulk of the body of the ship. It was then coated in white chocolate ganache and covered with fondant. Even though the cake was around 90cm in length, the extremely sleek design means the actual amount of included cake ended up approximately equivalent to an 8" cake.

This was the first time we tried using a vinyl covering for the base board rather than covering it with fondant icing. This allowed us to cover the base board as the first step and be able to wipe it down as it got covered in ganache and icing offcuts. Otherwise we would have needed to cover the board with icing around the supporting dowels.

Normandy covered starting to press in details. You can also see the full sized template sourced from the internet.

Details including the window lines, vents and panel joins were pressed into the fondant icing, and then the colour scheme hand painted on in edible paint. The wings were added last, consisting of a layer of MDF decorated with several layers of fondant.

We were certainly happy with the results and based on the letter we received from the clients I think they were too...

Dear Tenele,

I just wanted to say thank you so, so, so much. The cake was more amazing then I could have hoped for! You'll be glad to know we didn't want to cut it, we loved it so much, so we ate the kitchen cake (yum!) and took the ship home with us. It's currently sitting on our dining room table

I hoped you enjoyed making it as much as we enjoyed seeing it and eating it

Completed Normandy SR2 cake

Completed Normandy SR2 cake

Completed Normandy SR2 cake

So we had a very exciting week last week here at Stacked Cakes. We received a phone call the previous week from Channel 7's Prime Possums Saturday Club. They were interested in filming a segment and demonstration on kids cakes! Well of course we wanted to be involved with such a great kids show. So we arranged the details and set the date and time.

The crew arrived at lunch time on Wednesday. I am not going to lie, I spent the morning being quite nervous. When the doorbell rang my heart started pounding but as they all piled out of the car all my fears started to dissapate. They were all so easy going, laughing and having fun. The vibe was very relaxed and I knew it was going to be a good day.

Channel 7 arrives in Bungendore

So the crew consisted of five people, the producer, the sound guy, the lighting guy, the camera man and the host of the show, Madelaine Collignon.

They set me up with a microphone and lit the room brightly with their stage lights. I had set up a display of cakes behind my workbench and had specially made a coule of kids cakes to go with my wedding cakes.

We started off with a quick run through the questions they were going to ask and then we jumped straight into it. It was fascinating to see how it all works behind the scenes. We did each question and answer twice so they could film it from a different angle each time. Then we moved into the demo. I had decided to do my dinosaur cake as it is bright and fun and a good place for a beginner decorator to start.

All up we spent around an hour and a half filming, I must say it felt like half an hour it just flew by. I can't believe how much fun I had. The crew made it all so much fun that I completly forgot about nerves and just enjoyed the moment. It really was a great experience and am honored they chose me to participate in the show.

At the end of the filming I sent them away with the cake for them to share at the office, I hope they enjoyed it!

Next is to see it on TV! I am really excited to see how they edit down all the footage. Now it is on early on a Saturday morning but I think it will be worth getting out of bed for, I will post on my Facebook page when I have the exact date it will air.

Madelaine Collignon of Channel 7 and Tenele Pekin from Stacked Cakes

We finally got a request for an R2D2 cake.  We have enjoyed making our previous sci-fi themed cakes and were looking forward to making a Star Wars favorite.

We decided we wanted him to be able to stand up properly without a support under him. This necessitated making his legs and feet out of non-edible, structural materials (wood and polystyrene). His body and head is made entirely out of choc mud cake and icing.

R2D2 was the perfect opportunity to add a sound module to one of our cakes. These modules allow the cake to make any noise you can imagine with the push of a button. Music, sound effects, engine noises, talking, anything at all is possible. Please let us know if you want to add the special touch of sound to your next stacked cake.

You can watch a video demonstrating R2's sound module below, and keep reading for step by step photos of the construction of this mega cool cake. Templates are available for download at the end of the article if you want to have a go at building your own R2D2

Planning Stage

Templates

Leg and base boards

Support assembly

Sound module

Bottom taper attached

Bottom of cake covered

Feet

Polystyrene finished

Fondant icing added to the legs

Body stacked and ganached

Fondant added to R2's body

R2's stand, body and head nearly ready for assembly

Head added

Details added

Battery pack cables

Templates

You can download our templates below. The images should be printed at full size, not scaled to fit. This may require tiling the output across multiple pages and sticking them back together.

• Cake board
• Dome
• Legs
• Body

Wow time does get away. It has been way too long since I last posted. So I though I might post my favourite cakes of 2011. There has been some fun stuff to choose from but here is my final list....and the awards go to...

Favourite Wedding Cake of 2011

Favourite Kids Cake of 2011

Favourite Delivery of 2011. (To Parliament House)

Favourite Gory Cake of 2011

Favourite Car Cake of 2011

Favourite Novelty Cake of 2011

I thought you might like to see some fun kids cakes I did recently.

This one is based around the character Humphrey from Humphrey's Corner.

I don't really need to introduce this next character.

Figure modelling really is one of the hardest things about my job. Especially when the character is well known. You have to get the likeness right or everyone will know. I was a little stressed about creating these two characters but once I got started with it it all came together really well.

I created this Carousel Cake last week for a very special 1st birthday.

What I loved about it so much was that not only was it gorgeous and all the hard worked paid off with a beautifully finished cake but it was entirely my own design.

Often customers contact me with pictures of cakes they would like re-created and that is great but it just isn't the same as seeing a cake through from concept to delivery. Seeing a design you have created come to life is thrilling and the customers end up with their own designer cake.

So next time you are thinking of a cake consider getting it designed especially for you.

I can take your ideas, colour schemes and inspirations and put it all together into a design with you in mind.

Martin made this great little stop motion animation of the cake too. Really makes it come to life.