Superman Cake. (October 2001)

Another season premiere cake. This one is for the series premiere of Smallville, about the life of the young Clark Kent. I used the Wilton Handsome Man pan, which I got on ebay awhile back and I've been dying to try it out. I used a chocolate cake mix and buttercream icing. Usually, I just use vanilla in the icing, but this time I put 2/3 vanilla and 1/3 almond, which made for a very nice combination. As a rule, I tend to avoid almond in food I make for other people, mainly out of habit because my mother is (or at least used to be) allergic to them.

I decorated this largely during the commercial breaks of "Angel". Note that for a change I didn't use tip 16 stars to cover the surface. I went for the smooth look instead, and things turned out fairly well. It was kind of a rush job because I wanted to get to bed on time for a change. (I didn't, by the way.) One trick I've learned to save on the amount of icing I make is that when I need black icing (in this case for the hair & eyebrows), I wait til the end and mix the other leftover icing together and add black food coloring until it's black enough to use.

Problems: As you can see, this is not the world's handsomest depiction of Superman. He almost looks a little more like Bizarro, except the S on his chest is facing the right way. I've never been good with drawing faces, and apparently drawing with icing doesn't improve things any. Also, it's not a problem, but it almost was: this cake is pretty long from head to toe--about 16". I'm glad I still had a couple 16" rounds & boxes left or I don't know what I would have done.