Structural Question . . . (Long, Very Long)
Decorating By Hollyanna70 Updated 19 Sep 2007 , 8:09am by Hollyanna70
2 options:
use 16" pans, bake extra 1 or 2 that you can cut the missing length out of and then glue on to the rest w/ BC or chocolate
or
bake in the other pans and use the extra for the mouse, keyboard and....CAKE BALLS which you take along as well.
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servings -- well at 2x2 that's about 24 per layer and 6 layers makes 144 (a gross!) -- and of course larger serving size = fewer servings (3x3 = a shy 72)
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cost: at least $500 just for the tower -- $575 even.
and if you do the extras (screen, keyboard, mouse) -- then more.
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re: not dark yet --- wowzer! --- and I'm even awake!
Well, first of all, I'd say the project is worth at least $600, but probably more like $800 (at least 144 servings of cake, plus fondant work, plus the RCT keyboard, monitor and mouse, and all the fondant work on those, plus the edible image?).
On to pan sizing. So your masonite boards are cut to 17.5" x 6.75"? That makes things a little tough. I would suggest using a 12"x18" pan and reducing the width a little, but not if the boards are already cut, and anyway, reducing the width isn't going to help your stability any.
So... I'd say go with the 16" square. You're going to have extra width anyway and you can easily use the extra pieces to add a little length. At this point I think it all comes down to doing as little extra work as possible because this is a HUGE project! If it would be less of a hassle for you to trim down the boards to 16"x6.75" and not have to piece together any cake then do it! If you thing a little piecing will be easier than getting the boards trimmed then do that.
I don't think I'd use a longer pan and only cut out one from each. That's a TON of wasted cake. Even if you do as Doug suggested and make the keyboard and mouse out of cake... you'd end up with a million cake balls (and an extra time consuming project making them). Think how much more time it'll take just to mix up all that extra batter, not to mention baking all those extra cakes (one at a time).
Now, not that it matters, but I'm still confused on how exactly you're planning on doing the monitor... I know Doug has mentioned a "bed of nails" but where would that go? Under the monitor itself (kinda up in the air?) or under the oval base of the monitor? how are you going to keep the sides from drooping? Or is the whole monitor kinda leaning back a little on a "bed of nails" the same size as the whole thing? Haha.... Like I said, MY confusion really doesn't matter! 
bed of nails under the monitor main section supporting it so it doesn't slip off -- kind of leaning back a little. -- tho' if RKT are allowed to harden enough, betting it could be full upright.
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ooooo.....had an idea.
could you use the 12x18 pan -- gets it long enough and then put a aluminum foil wall held in place w/ dry beans or bricks to wall off the pan narrower? worth a test run to see if it works
That's an idea blocking off an 18"x12" but it still leaves her baking off each cake one at a time... and that's a LOT of cakes to bake. Even with two pans (providing her oven is big enough) it would take a lot of time to reset the "wall" and beans for each cake.
Wow, you guys are just full of great ideas! 
I'm not sure what I'm doing yet. I'll be figuring it out in the next couple of days, I guess. I might do one of each and alternate, who knows?
I like the idea of making the keyboard and mouse out of the leftover cake if I use the 12x18.. That would save me a lot of molding from rice krispie treats.. I mean, honestly, I guess only the monitor needs to be rice krispies, since that's the only one that will be up in the air, so to speak.
I never dreamed what I'm doing would be worth that much if I were to ever sell it. I just hope the keyboard keys turn out well. That's one of the main reasons I decided to do a full scale, instead of just a little one, or a laptop. Just thought the bigger the keys, the easier to write those letters and numbers on it.. haha
Silly reason, I know. 
Well, I'm going to make up a batch of icing. Before I can even get started on the groom's cake, I have to do a Nascar cake for my mother and father, and a cake for my nephew. Taking those up to Ohio next weekend, then as soon as I get back it's a whole week of working on the groom's cake. My family gets to be the guinea pig for the chocolate buttercream I'm about to make.
I'll keep you guys informed as I go along. As you can see I haven't done much else. I've had a migraine for 3 days, so it's been difficult to do anything. This week is going to be mostly the little odd jobs. Putting the cake board together (dowels didn't fit through the holes, so I have to start over there), molding the keyboard keys, making templates for the shapes I'll need to carve, baking cakes and freezing them, etc.
Thanks again for all your help. I'm sorry if I don't respond to anyone specifically, or if you think I didn't like your idea, it just isn't so. I'm just a little jumbled right now, and even though I only respond to one or two things, I assure you I am listening to every single thing that's said, and trying to pick out what is the best and easiest for me to do. (bit inexperienced, as you can tell from my photos)
Thank you all, very much!!!
Holly
FWIW, standard printer ink is completely non-toxic and is perfectly safe to use with edible image sheets.
Just a note:
I made up some icing to see how it would turn out.. It turned out wonderfully! I posted about it in sugarshack's thread here...
http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-19948.html
I didn't think it was very chocolatey at first, but the next day it really was, and my husband loved it.
I'm using my family as guinea pigs next week to see what they think. If they all like it, then I've found the icing I will be making to use on the groom's cake. 
I went tonight and bought another drill bit set. It goes up past a 1/2 inch so now I should never have the issue of not making a hole big or small enough.. hehe I also bought a level.
I swear, I think I like using power tools almost as much as I like cake decorating.. haha
Thanks again everyone. If my headache is gone tomorrow, I will get back to work, and post some more.
Holly
I'll post more in a couple of days, after I've had time to recooperate. Let's just say, structural part of it, least of my worries.
Wish me luck on actually being able to finish it up, and make it presentable. heh
I have 3 hours to do so. haha
Ok, so I finished it up the best I could.. Lots and lots of snags..
(hats off to all those who do fondant on large cakes, I have a new respect for all of you!)
I couldn't find licorice rope so I decided to just roll fondant and use that for cables, well, I never got the chance to do that because I ran out of time after all the things that went wrong. So, no cables, and minimal detail work, for the same reason.
It took forever to get the fondant rolled out to put over the cake. I tried doing it one side at a time, but that was no good. It just didn't want to stick to the buttercream.. So, I tried doing it in sections, and thought, eh well.. it'll have a couple of lines in it.. No big deal, we'll just say it's a generic computer case. That didn't work either. So, I decided to do the dreaded, draping the whole darn tower in fondant. Haha, yeah, um.. not going to happen! I finally get all the fondant rolled out, with my husband's help (I have serious bruises on the palms of my hands from this), and we pick up the mat and carefully place it over the cake.. Bam! 2 seconds later it all comes falling off, and 2 corners of the cake come with it. Grrrrr!!! Ok, so this is all in the last hours of the night before the wedding, because all week there have been issues. The first being when I came back home from our trip to Ohio. Kitchen full of ants. Why? Dear dear husband left a baggie of cake scraps open on the counter. Oh, but that wasn't good enough for them, no, they had to get into my cupboard and find the open box of cereal I didn't know about. (sister left it after her visit) I keep my cereal in a sealed container.. heh So, for 2 days I clean the entire kitchen, empty the cabinets, and spray everything.. Then I have to disinefect the whole kitchen. bleh! After that, I can get to work on the cakes. (by the way, no ants since.. yay!)
So, I spend all week doing all the stuff I was supposed to do the first two days getting home. I built the cake board, secured all my dowels, etc. I made up rice krispie treats and put all those in the shapes needed, except for the top of the monitor. I made all the molds for the keyboard, then molded all the keys. There's so many little things that had to be done it's just unreal. The sad part, after looking at the cake, you would never know how long it actually took.. heh Not to mention everything I ran out of, and had to get more (4 batches of icing used). I couldn't find enough fondant in black, so I had to get white (all they had in the amount I needed) and try to dye it. Well, my husband and I both did this for hours and hours, and the best we could get was dark grey, and we thought.. hrm.. a dark grey tower is quite normal, so that's what he will get. I think Dell has dark grey towers, even they I was going to model it after the HP tower my husband has. Oh well, it'll work. If all else fails, we will do a white tower! hehe
Also, I was going to use the preval sprayer to spray the front silver (no compressor for the airbrush) After a few practice runs, I couldn't get it to work. So, no go on the silver front, and no go on spraying the dark grey black (that was another idea).
Ok, so after all the mishaps, and the tons and tons of errands poor husband had to run (I have a new respect for him too ), it finally got to the last things needing done, which was putting the fondant on the cake and detail work. As I said before, the fondant was so heavy it just fell right off again. It also took part of the cake with it. At this point I was at my wits end, so there was only one thing left to do... Salvage what I could and call it a night. I had already missed the rehearsal and dinner because of the cake, I wasn't about to miss the wedding too. So, my husband and I went to walmart, since it was the only thing open that late at night (and I really needed to get out of the house) and I bought even more stuff. I made up a fresh batch of buttercream, but forgot to get chocolate, so I had to use cocoa, which meant I had two different flavors of chocolate buttercream on the cake. I colored it black, and I iced the whole cake in buttercream, repairing what I could. I drew some lines on the front with a knife, put on the little HP fondant piece I had made, I did as much detail work as I could on it, and went to get a whole 2 hours sleep before I had to get ready for the wedding.
My husband woke me up and said, honey, it's time to get ready. I asked how the cake was and he said there were a couple of cracks in the icing, but otherwise it was fine. So I said.. ok, a few more minutes then. I dozed a bit more, then got up. Before doing anything I went to the dining room, those 2 little cracks were not cracks, but were the cake pulling away and about to fall. I hung my head and headed to the kitchen to get a bag of icing to try and repair it, once again. By the time I got the bag filled and walked back in the dining room (probably less than 2 minutes) the whole back side of the cake just fell off and onto the board. I cried.. I told my husband I give up, I'm not going to the wedding, I can't do it, etc. I guess the little cry did me good, because I started working on it again. I repaired what I could, and filled the rest with just icing. The front hadn't fallen yet, so I was able to "glue" it back together. The back, well, that's a little different. Since it had all fallen off I had to do major repairs there. I took some of the cake and mixed it with the icing and kind of built it back up, then covered all that with icing. I got it all smoothed out, at least the best I could, and my husband told me to go take a shower and he would put the lines back in.. heh (I volunteered to show them how to cut the cake, so I could cut the ugly pieces off and discard them. )
I still almost didn't go to the wedding, but I went anyway. I was sick to my stomach, but I don't know if that was from sheer exhaustion, or frustration, or what, but it passed after sitting down for a bit, so I got dressed and went anyway. I put my face on in the car, and the trip was just long enough my hair was almost dry by the time we got to the reception hall.
The groom was thrilled. He loved it. Everyone loved it. I had people asking for my business card, and I literally laughed in their faces. I was so shocked anyone could call this monstrosity good! I didn't mean to be rude, but I was truly exhausted. My whole body was so sore I could barely walk. I told them all I was flattered (and I was/am), but I didn't have a business, it was just a hobby. I was amazed at how much the groom liked it. He's usually very critical, and the first to point out any flaw, especially if it's mine. I was ecstatic over this.
I was also complimented about the taste of the cake, and the icings, among other things, but I can't mention everything here, since I don't know how many people from my area are actually on this site.
Ok, so here are pictures of my crappy cake, that got rave reviews. All of us decorators will definitely see the flaws, but for some reason, they didn't. *shrug*
Oh, I almost forgot.. The monitor. The original plan was to mold the whole thing out of rice krispie treats, except for the dowels holding it up. Well, the base is done that way, but when it came to do the monitor itself it was a nightmare. I meant to do it lying down, then stand it up after it had dried. Foolish me, I made the base and stand. I then attached those to the dowel rods and didn't even realize until the next day how stupid that was. So, I had to try to build the monitor itself around the dowels. Well, I apparently let my treats get too dry because they just did NOT want to stick. So no amount of molding was working. I even tried to soften them in the microwave.. No go. I wasn't sure what to do, until I remembered the slab of styrofoam I had that I used for my suckers for halloween. So, I cut that to the right size, as best I could, covered it with icing, and slapped some fondant on it. Then I added the picture I wanted, and covered the edges of it in fondant, to give it a monitor type look. Sadly, I completely forgot to add the details, like the power button, etc. (not that I would have had time anyway). That's why the monitor is so tall too. That's as far down as I could get the styrofoam monitor to go. It was supposed to go all the way down to where you can see that line. hehe
Thanks for looking, and I THANK all of you HERE for helping me. Doug, waterfallsoygurl, sugarbird, and anyone I may have missed. Thank you so much!! Everyone here at cake central was the inspiration to keep me going through every obstacle. Every time I thought, I just can't do this, I thought of being able to post my finished product (no matter how badly it turned out) and being able to get help in the places I needed it, and someone who actually knows to point out the good things I did. (if that makes sense)
Holly
OMG... that looks great... You did a fabulous job... 
Incredible work...you would never know that you had all those problems from looking at your wonderful cake!
All I can say is 'Good Lord'!! 
That is one amazing cake. I was exhausted just reading all the posts. I cannot even imagine making the darn thing. You did a fantastic job and deserved every bit of praise lavished on you. Hope you had a good rest and have fully recovered.
Fantastic Job! You must be so proud!
I must say, you are a braver woman than I to tackle such a gi-normous project!
My hat is off to you!
Thank you all, very much! That really makes me feel better about all of it.
I think, from now on, I will stick to small cakes. At least, until I can get better at it. I need some serious training with fondant, before I attempt something so large again.
Still, at times, I had a lot of fun.
Thanks again!
Holly
applauding as loudly as he can bang his hands together.
yelling hooray! yelling YA DUN GUD as load as he can.
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sure you see the flaws, but the rest of just see on fantastic show stealing cake (bet the bride was jealous)
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be proud of yourself.
you came, you made, you conquered.
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now get some well deserved rest (and get those business cards made!)
haha.. Thanks, Doug, but no business for me. Just a hobby while I live here. If I ever get to move back to Ohio, I might start up a business with my cousin and best friend. Otherwise, I just do it to stay in practice, and for friends and family.
The bride didn't say one way or the other whether or not she liked it. They posted about it on the game website, but she made no mention of me, so my husband piped in to let everyone know I made it, and to toot his own horn about helping me.. hehe It was very sweet of him, but not necessary.
I think she may have been a little put off, because when people came into the reception they went one of two places. 1. to look at the cake I made, or 2. to the chocolate fountain (which was spectacular!). No one even glanced at her cake, sadly. It was beautiful. If someone came to me and said they liked mine better, I was sure to let them know how beautiful I thought the bride's cake was, and how difficult it was to make a cake like hers. I didn't want anyone thinking the decorator who did hers, didn't put in as much time and effort as I did on mine. I know I couldn't have done a cake like that. I can't do cornelli lace to save my life.. heh
I couldn't have done it without all of you, and my husband. Hopefully, if something this big ever comes up again, I will be more prepared. I'll be sure not to take a trip the weekend before, too.
Thanks again!
Holly
I am really thrilled to see the cake, it doesn't look anywhere as bad as you described!! I bet they were thrilled! It looks awesome to me!!!
When I have to do one, I will call you. The best advice comes from learning the hard way.
WOW Holly!!
Sorry to hear that you had trouble with it, but it looks great!!!
Great job!!
Gosh, I've been away from CC for way longer than I realized and totally missed all of this!
Holly, you did an AMAZING JOB!!!!!!! That was a HUGE project, and I am extremely impressed at how it all turned out, ESPECIALLY considering all the problems you ran into!
Gosh, I can only shake my head in shock.... I made a (tiny by comparison) robot cake a few weeks ago, and nearly lost my mind in frustration with the fondant so I can only imagine what you went through. I'm amazed. I'm speechless. I can't even describe how amazing your cake is!
Congratulations! I know how hard it is to have a plan in your mind of how everything will work and then seen that plan just fall apart at the seams, but you did a spectacular job of changing plans and making it work!
WELL DONE!!!!!
This is so impressive!
What a great job you did!!!
Thank you so much.
There were far more problems than I listed, but that would have made the post probably two pages long.. hehe
Luckily, the lighting at the reception was more dim, so it looked a lot better than the photos.
After the reaction I received at the reception, and from here, I feel a lot better about the finished cake. Sure, there are a ton of things I wish I could have done, and hopefully next time I will get to, but I think it turned out well all things considering.
I'm pretty proud of myself now, looking back on all of it.
Thanks again,
Holly
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