Pomp and Circumstance

My brother-in-law asked me to make him a cake for his graduation party from graduate school.  He put in 2.5 years of hard work, but it all paid off in the end!  I had a general idea of what I wanted the cake to be - something that would go with the graduation theme.  I've always wanted to try to make sculpted books out of cake and a gumpaste figure of a person, so those fit the theme like a glove.  Since he is a police officer, I decided to add a sculpted cake to be like his police SUV.  It would tie everything together perfectly!

My bro-in-law's party was on a Sunday evening, so I had the best of intentions to start his cake Saturday morning.  That would give me plenty of time to finish all the meticulous details that I aspire to put into my cakes, but most often end up not having time to finish.  Saturday morning came and I awoke with a terrible migraine.  I was down for the count for the majority of the day.  Didn't even get to baking the cakes until later Saturday evening.  I was freaked out!  Somehow, miraculously I managed to get the cake done just in time for the party.  I would have like to have stamped out the letters for the book titles (I literally wrote the names on the books five minutes before we walked out the door) and put more detail on the police SUV, but all in all it turned out well and I was very happy with my gumpaste graduate.  Congrats to my bro-in-law who has always been like a big brother to me. :-)