Wired Birthday Cake
This birthday cake was a true celebration of all things held dear by my son. Not being the biggest fan of cake, I decided to decorate it with all of his favorite candies and lay on an extra thick coat of frosting underneath, which his his favorite part. He’s also really into his electronics set and learning all about all things with power, so instead of lighting the cake with candles, we wired it with flashing LED lights all around the perimeter powered by a hidden battery pack.
The cake had a rather intimidating start as a pile of wires. I happily left the electronic part of the project to my husband while I tended to the baking. It took both of us, however to fit the wiring up inside the tubes of licorice that would later run up the sides of the cake and hold the LED lights around the top edge of the cake. The licorice was a key to keeping the wiring elements separate from the edible portions of cake. It also kept it from becoming a fire hazard!
Aaah, here the cake comes together a little bit. Two layers of cake on a thin cardboard base stood on top of a nest of wires. You can see how the wiring was ran up one string of licorice, connected to an LED light, and ran back down the other side. This hid all of the ugly electronics work quite nicely. They only other challenge was concealing the battery pack which powered the whole thing. My solution was to tape it to the cake pedestal and cover it with curly ribbon.
After the wiring basics were in place, it was time to fill in the remaining surfaces with candy. This cake held almost 2 packs of Red Vines licorice, half a bag of Skittles sprinkled on top, 2 packs of Sour Patch ropes, and one large box of Nerds.
My son and his friends was in heaven with the candy overload, and they were blown away by the flashing LED lights. It caught a ton of attention and interest at the party venue that day. The effort was a bit extreme, but in the end it was totally worth it.
As a side note, we made a bunch of cupcakes sprinkled with Nerds and Skittles just in case the flashing lights made any of the guests skeptical about eating the cake. In the end, everything was devoured. It was a big hit!
