I was honored to be asked to create a cake to go along with the “Road of Life” theme of the 80th birthday party for my client’s amazing father. His life reads like a novel. He was a Green Beret, & was awarded the Purple Heart medal for his service in Vietnam where he was badly wounded. He came home, earned his college degree, and then joined the medical collections company his go-getter wife, Mary, had launched by herself from their living room. Together they grew the company into a large national agency. He just retired at age 77, but is still kicking!

Their daughter wanted the cake to chronicle each chapter of his life. She sent me tons of pictures, which I printed into edible images & fit as many as I could onto the cake. I molded the frames from gumpaste & painted with luster dusts to antique them. I used his actual Purple Heart medal to create a mold & then re-created it in gumpaste & fondant for the cake. The only non-edible element of the cake was the wire supporting structure in the first tree.

With some help from a handy friend, I created a turntable out of a heavy-duty Christmas tree stand, & the whole cake was rotating! The stand was perfect, as it turns very slowly at 1 RPM. It was perfect to showcase the entire road as it traveled up the cake.

The top tier is Red Velvet Cake with White Chocolate Buttercream filling. The middle tier is Double Choclate Pound Cake with Chocolate Kahlua Buttercream. The bottom tier is Pumpkin Spice Pound Cake with Salted Caramel Buttercream. All cakes were finished with milk chocolate ganache & covered in fondant.