hey all... i'm in a time crunch...i just had a last minute request for a cake for tomorrow afternoon for a 16 year old GENIUS (i'm serious) who is returning from an all summer science camp from NJIT. i think its a college preporatory program where basically every day he had about 5 hours of physics, math, and other smarty pants classes. so, asked to do his welcome home cake, but i'm stuck because i' m used to having several weeks advance notice to plan a design. this doesnt need to be big, i'm thinking just an 8" round double layer cake. it needs to be chocolate, with whipped ganache and a chocolate wrap. the wrap is optional, but i was thinking maybe chocolate transfer beakers and test tubes, and the atom symbol...i dont know, maybe E=MC2 ???? his sister said he is also extremely interested in space shuttles and would like me to do consider doing that.

i've been brainstorming, but i know that i dont have alot of time to do anything complicated or to use gumpaste ...please help me figure out how to incorporate this without looking to busy or taking too long. i want it to look nice, but i dont want to spend more than 3 or 4 hours, baking included.

ideas anyone?

Umm.....What about a mad scientist approach? I did a search for physics clip art and came across this. This could make the cake a little more fun.

how about making a model of an atom? any atom or a DNA double helix (sp?) something sciency or even shape the cake like a beaker of some kind of potion with cotton candy smoke coming out the top... just a thought!

I just did a cake for a science geek (posted below) - it was a 9" cake with a RKT earlenmeyer (sp??) beaker on top "exploding" with icing and mangos and strawberries (customers idea). Also on the top of the cake was the old snake symbol for alchemy. I think the exploding beaker is a fun idea - you could have it explode atom symbols etc!

Another idea, I asked hubby (engineering physics graduate) for ideas. He suggested piping projectile motion equations (http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~vawter/PhysicsNet/Topics/Vectors/ProjectilesMotion.html) around the sides of the cake (to tie into the space shuttle interest.) He also suggested putting either the NASA logo on the top, or doing a chocolate transfer or edible image of the earth with the orbiting shuttle or the orbital tracking map (http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/tracking/)
Hope this help some more.

thanks everybody, i appreciate the ideas.

chovist, wow those links were great. lost me, but they were great! i ended up going with the nasa logo - it just looked right. so...! the photo is in my pictures if you all care to take a look and let me know what ya think!

thanks again!!!

oh, chovist, i forgot to mention...i thought the projectile equations idea was great. the reason i didnt want to do anything like that (or even the atom symbol for that matter) is that this kid is incredibly smart, and if i couldnt explain what i put on the cake, or if i made a mistake in a placement somewhere, he'd be sure to point it out to me and i'd never hear the end of it! lol !!!! with the logo...i was safe (i hope!)