I have been asked to do a cake for a lady who is turning 100. It needs to serve 100. They don't want anything REAL fancy (no tiers, fondant, etc.), but something that is dignified and pretty. Any suggestions? I don't want it to be boring either.

Wow, what an honor to do a cake for this person! YOu must be so excited!

When I hear of 100th birthdays, I always marvel at the many changes they've seen in their lifetime. They saw the Wright Bros. first flight and they saw man land on the moon. They remember when hardly anyone had a phone in their home and they see instant communication via email. They watched Henry Ford roll the first car off of the assembly line and they see the space shuttle travel back and forth like a greyhound bus.

I always thought it would be cool to do a cake that was 12x72 (take four 12x18 sheets and slice them in half width-wise and lay them end to end) and then create a time line of this person's life with all of the major events and technologies they've seen. Wouldn't that be a vision of history?

Indydebie
One does not have to be 100 to have known those things!!! It twasn't so long ago.

What an honor is right. She grew up in a time when cakes were plain to save money, sugar, etc. , only to watch as cakes suddenly showed up with boiled frostings and garland/stringwork decorations. Now almost a thing of the past due mostly to fondant. Maybe she would be honored more with the garland/stringwork decorations.

Wow..thats amazing...

My great grandma is 101 and I cant imagine the things she has seen, if (God willing) she makes it to 102 I would be honored to make her cake. So heres a bump and a thought...I think a stacked cake, making it to that age is grounds for more than just a sheet cake.


Just a thought ~Alicia

Maybe find some images from childhood and do something with that.

My great grandma is turning 99 this month and I know she remembers moving to Minnesota as a child when most people were still using covered wagons to move west.

How fun for you! My grandma turned 100 this past August and my sister made her cake. It was really simple. A sheet cake with the number 100 on top of it. I believe the number was 2 layers high so it really stood up over the rest of the cake. She decorated it very simply but it was still stunning. If you're interested, I could see if my sister could email me the pic.

How about a scrapbook style of cake with pictures of your grandma from her younger days.

How about a stacked cake with those Wilton separators that you can place pictures - like a timeline. I would add pictures of her and her family as she grew up. Or also Indydebi suggestion of a long cake with those images if they don't want a stacked cake.

Also, there was a post here on CC a while back and someone suggested a cake in the shape of the number 100. You might want to do a search on that.

Thanks everyone for the great ideas, you've really given me some good ones to use!

[quote="momsandraven]...... My son had never seen a PHONE CORD before!!! WOW. that just blew me away!.....[/quote]

hahahaha! It broke my heart when the Fisher Price telephone went from a dial to a push-button ( and when will the question appear in an edition of Trivial Pursuit of "why do we say 'dial' a phone?") and when I bought my daughter a toy cash register set-up and it had a scanner instead of cash register buttons!

Well, now that we are on this other topic. I teach preschool as my day job and we lost the use of our gym for a few months. We needed to think of something to do in a much smaller room for large motor development. My director suggested some records she had that have lots of fun movement songs. We pulled them out and you should have heard the questions the kids were asking! They truely thought that they were just big CD's. They are so precious.
Anyway, thanks again for all the wonderful ideas. Keep them coming. I still have a few days to make up my mind.

A few years ago, we were at MIL's house and she still has an old rotary dial type phone. I told my son to call his other grandma. He picked up the phone and just stared at it. He didn't know how to dial without push buttons.

But that has absolutely nothing to do with your cake, lol. I would probably do something old fashioned, like a cake that would have been done in her earlier years, with swags and buttercream flowers.

I did a cake recently that had pictures of the mother surrounded by pictures of her children. It was a simple sheetcake but she really enjoyed it because of the pictures.

HEY INDYDEBI,

I was in a great little toy store the other day, and they carried those Fisher-Price rotary phones that we had when we were little. I almost cried. I wanted to get one, but my husband pointed out that the kids wouldn't know what they were. Hey...they would make a pretty cute cake....hmmmm

TJ

Wow 100 years old... I hope to make it there myself too ... what an honor to be asked to do the cake .. I like the timeline idea .. if not on a sheet cake then on the sides around a tiered cake .. photos of her through the years... do you have access to an edible image printer or have one? It would be so cool to do her life in pictures on the cake .... whatever you decide, let us know how it turns out .. good luck!

I have a simple one in my photos that I had done for a dear friend's 100th Birthday. The 100 was done with cookies, RBC edged in gold luster dust.

selahmycat, that cake is gorgeous in it's simplicity! (Also love the pool cake!)

I really like selahmycat's 100th cake as well! Very elegant.

My grandmother in law's 100th birthday was yesterday and I got to make the centerpiece cake. The other cakes were costco sheet cakes so I made a round 3 tier with her favorite flower - pink roses and did simple scrollwork on the sides and added some edible pink pearls and a gumpaste 100 on top. The picture is in my album.

Good luck with your cake! I can't wait to see it.

The picture should be displaying for my avatar too..

Thank you all for the kind words. I should have mentioned, the cake didn't have any wrinkles until someone decided the birthday girl should pick up the corner for pictures. It was a full sheet, so...

As for the pool cake, the footprints came about because of an "oops"! I had gotten the words really off center, so they were added to balance it out. As my DH says, if you make a mistake, just put a blob of frosting on it and no one will know! He is so good!!!