Sunday Sweets: Mythical Beasts & Where to Devour Them
January 12, 2014 The time has come, my Sweets-loving friends. Prepare yourselves.
[ahem hem hem]
UNLEASH THE KRAKEN CAKE!!
;)
(By Gastro Gothic)
Thank you.
Yep, today we're delving into the Legends of Old... to bring you the Tastiness of New. Which sounded way better in my head. Er...
Look! Over there! UNICORN!
;)
(By The Cake School)
Simply stunning. And if this reminds you of the movie Legend, then we should be friends.
And speaking of 80s movies: I watched The Last Unicorn for the very first time recently. Is it just me, or does that have a rather unusual amount of supernatural boobage in it for a children's cartoon?
Yikes, two cakes in and I'm already talking about supernatural boobage. That's gotta be a new record!
Er, here, allow me to distract you with...
;)
(By Adventures in Cake Decorating)
Garden gnome eating cake!
Now let's all pause a moment to ponder the delicious irony of a cake eating itself.
(... which ALSO sounded better in my head.)
Hey, you know what's totally hot in mythical beasts this year?
;)
(By Mike's Amazing Cakes)
Phoenixes. And I gotta say it, Mike: lovely plumage.
(Or, if you prefer Aladdin to Monty Python: Fabulous, Harry, I love the feathers.)
Ever stop to wonder what kind of occasion would call for a Cyclops cake?
;)
(By Debbie Does Cakes)
Well, now you have.
Yay! We get to go back to 80s fantasy flicks with this next one, and let me tell you, I APPROVE:
;)
(By Marcy's Cakes, photo found here)
Wow.
Wow, wow, WOW.
I've seen one or two fantastic Falkor cakes before, my friends, but this one blows them all away. Marcy even captured the pink undertones, and the unique texture of his scales and fur! [reference shot] Again I say: WOW.
How do you follow up the world's best luck dragon cake?
With the world's cutest baby dragon cake, of course:
;)
(By a Pocket Full of Sweetness)
There are bunches of baby dragon cakes out there, but I love this little girl's unique design. Eye fins, 'stache beard, and a roly-poly tummy? YES, PLEASE.
Hmm, ok, maybe it's getting a little TOO cute in here. But what's that over there? Through the trees, over that ridge? Do you see a loping figure off in the distance?
No?
Well, how 'bout this guy?
;)
(By Amber at the Hilltop Hy-Vee, more pics here.)
It's our very own Big Foot, no Wal-Mart pork ribs needed!
Now, I know this is stretching credulity, but believe it or not, this cake is completely fondant-free - and Amber, the baker, works at a Hy-Vee grocery!
We can only hope Amber will be doing her OWN nationwide tour to present the "body of evidence." [winkwink] (Dibs on the cold shoulder!)
Now here's a baker who could fool me any day with her edible sculptures:
;)
(By MG Sugar Cake)
All of her toppers look like they were plucked out of a porcelain fine art gallery! (Check out her Princesses pulling funny faces design, too - your jaw will drop.)
And more prettiness, 'cause you know we've gotta have at least ONE fairy in here:
;)
(By Splendor - Cakes and More)
Hard to believe the wee little plants & tree stump are almost as darling as the fairy!
Of course, there's a reason you see more dragons these days than any other mythical beast - and I'm not just talking The Hobbit and Game of Thrones:
;)
(By Broken Sparrow Cakes)
Bottom line: dragons are awesomely badass.
Especially when they come with bucket seats.
Still, this is MY post, and I AM a girl raised in the 80s, so...
PEGASUS WINS:
;)
(By Wicked Little Cake Company)
(More angles here)
And oh yes, my friends, those really ARE cotton candy clouds. Hit that link up there to see more angles, and for the best baker comment ever:
"All edible except the parts that make it stand, but I would probably kill whoever tried to take a bite out of it."
(Bwahahaha! Finally - I KNEW bakers had to feel that way sometimes!)
*****
Curious which bakers in your area have been featured here on Sweets? Then check out our Sunday Sweets Directory!
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Reader Comments (43)
Bucket seats. Yup. That's why we love you, Jen. (Oh, and for these wonderful cakes and the amazing commentary...)
Okay, I'm definitely going to have to re-watch "The Last Unicorn" because I have no idea what you're talking about. We used to rent that pretty much every time it was my turn to pick the movie at Blockbuster. That or (hangs head in shame and how wonderfully awful it is) "My Stepmother Is an Alien." :)
The Last Unicorn was my favorite movie as a kid. I remember asking my parents to rent it from the video store repeatedly. It probably would have cost them less to just buy it for me, as many times as we rented it. I don't recall any side boob in the movie, but that's probably just because I didn't know what side boob was when I was six.
Also, has someone been inspired by the blogess this week by chance, with the unicorn, bigfoot, and pegasus mentions? My god does that woman make me laugh.
Jen - How could you just have seen The Last Unicorn?! I love that movie and have since I was a kid. Though I'm not sure I got the scariness/supernatural till I was older. Another movie that's supposed to be for kids along those same lines is Rats of NIMH, if you haven't seen that recently.
OMG love the Falkor cake-never ending story was a favorite of mine :D the Kraken cake is awesome. I want a plushie of the baby dragon.
The Last Unicorn was my daughter's favorite movie, and she watched it frequently. The singing in it though drove me crazy!
For those who don't have time to watch much of TLU, she's thinking of this scene in particular: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCvEL41kIQg
smile...smile...smile...bucket seats...full-blown laughter.... I love Cake Wrecks!
Love these cakes. So gorgeous. My favorites are the unicorn and the fairy. I wouldn't want to eat them because they're so pretty.
Oh my word...that dragon cake just gave me the most brilliant idea. It's green scales, the shape of it's body, the wood in the "saddle" and your mention of hobbits came together to make me think of this...
What if you had a dragon cake similar to that one, sitting in the same position that on is only with it's legs crouched up underneath it. On it's back, the scales give way to blades of grass. And on mid belly, between the, a hobbit door, with Bilbo peeking out with a slightly worried look (the dragons head would be angled so that he was peering over the mound (ie, his back) at Bilbo. '
In front there would be a path with would be the words written on it.... "It's a dangerous business, going out your door."
Brilliant, right? Unfortunately I do not have the talent to do this, so I give this idea to anyone who wants to use it. :-)
This is probably my most favourite post ever. Thank you.
So I've spend the afternoon cleaning up an old arrangement of "A Whole New World", just downloaded fonts for dragons, pirates, Potter, Python, magic, fairies, and I come over here and see THIS? Spooky. Also, utterly awesome and reminding me I need a mermaid font...
I would LOVE to ride on a dragon's back in a bucket seat! I hope the spyglass is included in the fee.
Re: Big Foot- I would not have expected that to be fondant-free! WOW!
The unicorn, fairy and baby dragon are adorable, but my favorite is the cyclops. I want to take his little underbite-adorned face home and make him my squishy. And he shall be my squishy.
Bucket seats! š
Jen did you see the Alice in Wonderland cake by MG Sugar Cakes? It was at the bottom of the pictures after the Princess funny faces. AWESOME does not start to express the beauty
thanks again for your awesome posts, humor and everything
The Last Unicorn is one of the best 80's fantasy movies ever. So glad you've seen it.
I didn't notice the boobage in The Last Unicorn until I rewatched it in high school. It took me FOREVER to find on dvd at that point, but I have loved that movie since I was little. I would always watch it at my Uncle's house, he was the one who got me interested in fantasy and mythical creatures. He is also the one who bought me the Wizard of Oz books.
Awesome unicorn cake, I might just have to come back to this post once a day to see that and the pegasus!
The difference between professional cake picture posted on authorĀ“s webside and professional cakewreck picture took in bakery is simple one word. Photoshop. I donĀ“t like the unicorn CAKE because of its creepy flashy eye. Stone me to death with a cake. Jarca
I could not imagine cutting into any of these "cakes".
Falkor actually made me gasp, he is that good. All of these are cute; how could you bear to cut into and eat any of them?
Ah, I looked it up and! I knew there probably wasn't more than one Hilltop Hy-Vee. I just moved away from Mankato, and had no idea while we were there that a gorgeous cake could be had from Hy-Vee.
TLU did have quite a bit of boobs--the harpy had 3 and the oak tree had some boob-ish bits.
Jen, I urge you to read the book, it's even better!
Aww ... I wish the baker of the princess cake had given credit for the picture she based it off of.
Here's the original, for those curious: http://briannacherrygarcia.deviantart.com/art/smile-for-the-camera-42854459
One of these years, I want to see a Falkor cake based on the version in the book. If you used Haku from Spirited Away, you'd just about get it perfect.
For that matter, a Haku cake would be just as awesome.
"Legend"! I adore that movie (by Ridley Scott, no less)! Tim Curry was awesome as Darkness. I wanted Lily's black dress.
Wow! those are some incredible cakes!
FALKOR! Also, mermaids.
As for The Last Unicorn, it was animated by Rankin/Bass Productions (like the animated Hobbit movie) with the 'dirty work' done by a Japanese studio (members of which would go on to found Studio Ghibli). And it was faithful to the books.
Hahhahahaha, yeah, the harpy boobage was a bit much for a kid's movie, but I loved that movie as a kid, and I still love it now. Rankin/Bass movies always had wonky supporting characters and big noses, haha. They were never all perfect people, which is why the unicorn female stood out so well.
The book of The Last Unicorn wasn't written for kids. Why would the movie be? Just because a film is animated doesn't mean it's a Saturday morning cartoon.
@Jen - Ok, you can have Pegasus, I'm taking EVERYTHING ELSE. <wields nun-chuks warily>
Seriously though, I was a fan of unicorns and later added dragons. Back in the 80s, TimeLife actually had a book series on mythical creatures - cool, huh? My sis and I went halfies but being broke middle-schoolers with serious job prospect limitations (too young to work fast food and too cool to baby-sit), we ended our agreement after only a few volumes. I still have the dragon one, though. :-)
Aaaand a Q - those "ads" that have surveys - the one-question ones - does it help if we click on those? I know ad-clicking alone does not help - but seeing as how answering a survey is more concrete, do ya (i.e. CW, not me!) get points or something for that? Just wonderin'...
Maybe it's just the angle of the picture, but it looks like that phoenix is actually flying!
The Last Unicorn is not a children's film (even though it is animated), just as the original Peter S. Beagle novel that it adapts was not a children's book. So yeah, boobage, and a few "damn"s here and there, though depending on which release you watch, the very mildly salty language has been edited out due to protests by angry mothers complaining to Walmart because they thought they bought the dvd assuming it was equivalent to My Little Pony. The boobs stayed, though.
I grew up watching The Last Unicorn over and over again with my sister. It was one of my favorite movies, even if parts of it totally creeped me out! I haven't read the book yet, but I do have it on my Kindle now and did start reading it a little bit (Thanks to Wil for the Humble Books alert awhile ago). I need to go back and finish it!
The MG Sugarcakes Facebook page says (in Italian) she's only been doing cakes for a year. ONE year! She must have some crazy sculpting skills that she's now applying to cake, because wow!
Got to see that gnome sculpture at the Austin cake show a couple years ago. In fact, it was the best photo I took at that show! He was in the Special Techniques section, so he might must be a paste/fondant/modeling chocolate sculpture, rather than actual cake. Still crazy impressive. Also, you hit on most of my Big 5 all-time favorite fantasy flicks. Legend, Neverending Story, The Last Unicorn...Just missing Dark Crystal and The Princess Bride. These were the first movies I bought when I was converting to DVD from VHS!
"And speaking of 80s movies: I watched The Last Unicorn for the very first time recently. Is it just me, or does that have a rather unusual amount of supernatural boobage in it for a children's cartoon?"
Yes. Yes it does.
Man, this post combined with Being Human making a Ladyhawke reference last night makes me want to have an '80s fantasy movie marathon.
The phoenix is my favorite.
i have a hard time believing that the phoenix & the mermaids are cakes.
Fantastic cakes. I'm sending the unicorn ones on to Peter Beagle, author of "The Last Unicorn," and the folks currently touring the country with a new release of the "The Last Unicorn" movie. I'm not part of the event, but thought people who loved the movie might be interested in seeing it again on the big screen. You can find out about it here:
http://lastunicorntour.com
Agreeing with Ann that The Last Unicorn was not intended to be a "kiddie cartoon", although many people have the mistaken idea that all animation is kiddie stuff. There's a lot of serious material in both the book and the movie. I will say that, having both read the book and seen the movie, it's far and away the most faithful movie adaptation from a book I've ever encountered. Nothing is added, only one minor sub-plot is removed, and huge chunks of the dialogue are taken straight from the book.
If you are going to buy either the book or the movie, be sure to purchase them from Conlan Press: http://www.conlanpress.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc
There was a major legal screwup with the commercial release, and Peter has never seen a penny of royalties from it. The Conlan Press editions are authorized and the money goes directly to him.
@Cynthia: A friend of mine and I made Lily's black dress for another friend of ours years ago, and sweet mother of Bowie, that thing was a total PITA to make! If you ever see recreations for sale online and wonder why they cost SO much, that's why. TONS of beadwork, and wirework to keep the collar up... yikes, I'm having flashbacks!
@Emma: Inorite?! Two minutes into the episode, I turned to my Vulcan and said "Oh, how sad for Nora and Josh, they totally have a Ladyhawke thing goin' on. WALK ON THE LEFT SIDE!"
Your Pal,
Storm
Not to be TOO nit-picky, but why is "Happy 30th Becky" any better than "Happy Birthday 10th Kennedy" in the January 13 post? Punctuation matters, even (and maybe even more) on beautifully made cakes.
The Phoenix and the bucket-seat Dragon made my jaw drop! OMG!
The cyclops is also from a movie, albeit a bit older than the 80s fest we've got going on throughout most of the rest of the post (which I absolutely LOVE) - it's from The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad :-)