Dalek Cake With Light, Sound and Motion - Insane

This was an extreme cake for a group of elementary and jr. high robotics team members - it's 1/2 cake and 1/2 actual mutant Dalek.



For the cake:
The cake is seven 11x15 layers of cake, with cake boards and dowels between layers 4 and 5. (I made a serious error and used non-stick cake boards, which caused the layers to separate during transport - don't do that!) Buttercream between the layers. Carve the front and back to make the classic Dalek body shape. Crumb coat with buttercream, then frost with buttercream tinted golden yellow (or whatever color you like).

To get a sense of size - this cake required 16 box mixes (8 each chocolate and yellow cake), 4 dozen eggs, 8 cups of oil... plus approximately 8 lbs of powdered sugar for the buttercream along with 16 sticks of butter, 8 sticks of Crisco, 1 full bottle of vanilla... you get the idea! But it had to be big to scale with Greg's top.

For the knobs, I melted white chocolate and molded it using the Wilton "Dessert Domes" candy mold, the middle size dome. Apply these to the cake before the buttercream sets, and use some additional icing to help secure the candy. You need approximately 56 of the domes - 14 rows of 4, for an authentic Dalek. [Note - the mold instructions tell you to freeze the candy, but don't do that - it gets too brittle and the domes crack. Just let them set in the refrigerator.]

To finish, I airbrushed the cake with gold paint - I have a new "Duff's" airbrush machine and used the Duff's gold color paint. Very pleased with this.

Note that this "finished cake" is actually a shadow of what the cake could have been. As mentioned above, I used non-stick cake boards between the layers. I wanted to able to easily separate the layers for serving. I made a critical error, however, in that I doubled the cake boards so it would be non-stick on both sides. When we were moving the cake in the car, the layers slid apart, doing major damage. I had 40 minutes before the party, so I got my Mom (God Bless Mom!) to drive over so Greg could run to the store for canned icing - I reassembled the layers as best I could in the back of his car. I pulled off all the knobs, reiced with vanilla icing (mixed as best I could with the yellow/gold) and replaced the knobs. It was a good save, and the cake was still a hit thanks to Greg's magic top. (But UGH!)

The real magic of this cake is the Dalek top, which Greg built. As one friend noted: "authentic BBC special effects!" (That was meant as a compliment.)



Here is Greg's write-up:

The "brain" of the Dalek is an Arduino Uno microcontroller with an Adafruit Wave Shield added to give it audio capability. The head movement is done with a standard high-torque servo and an added pushbutton triggers activity. The arduino is powered with 8 AA batteries. The arduino can't produce much volume by itself, so the audio goes through a Bump 3.5mm Portable Mini Speaker (which has an internal battery charged over USB.)
The non-cake portion of the Dalek has three components. The top dome is half of an 8" styrofoam ball (covered with masking tape so it can be painted with standard paint). The "ears" are empty glass Testors paint jars with internal LEDs. The eye stalk is a 1/2" cardboard tube with a styrofoam ball (again taped and painted). The blue LED in the center of the eye is hard-wired to a CR2032 battery so that it is always on. The bottom side of the dome has a lego gear with 8 pins that sync with the servo when the dome is set upon the layer below.
The middle part of the Dalek assembly is made of circular pieces of MDF, cut with a Dremel circle cutter. The bottom is solid, middle two boards are only 1" wide rings and the top is a ring with a center bar where the servo is mounted. The layers are spaced with 1" lengths of PVC pipe. All the electronics, batteries and speaker fit inside this assembly. To hide these components, the inside of the ring is lined with thin, dark gray foam that was packing material.
The top and middle component are also linked with wires for the "ear" lights. These lights are synchronized with the audio through a simple circuit that can be found here. The wires just run through the access holes cut in the top ring of the middle element, and the motion of the top is limited so that the wires don't restrict the motion.
The bottom part of the Dalek assembly is a made of a 4" high, 8" diameter styrofoam cylinder glued to a 9" diameter bottom "plate". Onto this assembly are glued trapezoids cut from foam board to create the octagonal sides. Joints are taped and the assembly painted. The Dalek "gun" is a wire whisk with a roll of paper tucked inside, set in a black PVC pipe. The "sucker" is a funnel covered in black tape and mounted in a PVC pipe. Both the gun and sucker fit in holes cut in the foam board and are then shoved into the styrofoam inside.
The controlling software for the Dalek is about 250 lines of C code, mostly derived from an example program provided with the Wave Shield. The approach is pretty simple. At setup time, the program creates a list of all the .WAV files at the top level of the SD card filesystem. Then it enters a loop, waiting for a button press. Upon button press, the code selects an audio file at random and commands the wave shield to start playing it. While the audio file is playing, the code generates a random position value and commands the servo to move to it, delaying for a period of time based upon the distance to be moved so that the servo has time to move. This is done repeatedly until the wave shield indicates that the WAV file is done playing. Then the servo is moved back to the neutral central location and we go back to waiting for the next button press. (Actual code can be provided upon request.)


Also - thanks to my British friend Mark who provided the voice talent for the Dalek's "gracious professionalism" speech! That's the robotics program credo, so a nice finishing touch!

Cylon Cake - Difficult

 The cake actually isn't too hard, if you have a Larson Scanner...

This cake consists of 4 8" round layers, stacked with buttercream between each layer.  The top 2 layers are on a cake round, with dowels below for support and stability.

I molded Rice Crispy Treats to make the crest and face plate.  I cut a "window" for the Larson Scanner display.

Greg assembled the Larson Scanner from a kit (EvilMadScientist.com:  http://evilmadscience.com/productsmenu/tinykitlist/152-scanner?qh=YToxOntpOjA7czo2OiJsYXJzb24iO30%3D)   He used a fairly long wire for the battery pack, so the wire could wrap around the cake to the battery pack on the back of the cake board.

Greg also built a little shelf for the scanner from a thin piece of wood and encased it in a box made from a clear (grayish) plastic notebook divider page.  I placed bamboo skewers between cake round (under the 3rd layer) and the cake layer, so they protruded to make a little shelf.   I mounted the Larson Scanner on this shelf, placing the battery pack on cake board in the back.

I placed the rice crispy treat face place over the front and top of the caked, using liberal amount of buttercream to hold it in place. 

I covered the whole thing in gray-tinted rolled fondant, with the wire emerging from the back of the cake at the very bottom.  I covered the scanner with paper and sprayed the cake with edible silver spray color, to give it a shiny metallic look.   Remove the paper, turn on the power, and voila!

WALL-E - Difficult

I made the WALL-E cake for the robotics team end of year party.  It was a big hit.  Only the orange box is cake, all the rest is inedible materials that I added for effect.  I removed it before serving.

In advance, make the arms, wheel units, shoe and head/eyes out of Styrofoam.  Cover with rolled fondant, using picture or photo above as a guide.  Find a piece of pliable black metal to use as the neck/head support.  We used a left over shelf support - my husband used his manliness to bend it as pictured.  (I really have no clue what he did, but it was perfect!)

Also in advance, make the fondant decorations for the front of the cake. (buttons, control panel, and the "E" in a red circle)

1.  You need a square block of cake.  Using a 10" square pan, this means you need 5 2" layers.   Bake all the cakes and let cool.  If you use an 8" pan, you'll need 4 2" layers.

2. Level the cooled cakes.  Do not skip this - if the cakes aren't level, your cake will be crooked and unstable.  See: http://www.wilton.com/cakes/making-cakes/leveling-cakes.cfm   

3.  Using square cake "rounds" (cardboard separators), make 1 2 layer cake and 1 3 layer cake, with buttercream icing between the layers.  I had to cut the separates from larger rectangular ones as my store didn't have square "rounds" in stock in the 10" size.


4.   Stack the 2 cakes on your cake board, using dowels to support the top cake.  (I used a plastic 10" cake stand that had little feet - nice to get the cake off the board so it looked right with the wheel units.) Do not skip the dowels!  Your cake cannot stand without dowels!   See: http://www.make-fabulous-cakes.com/tiered-cakes.html  

5.  Frost the entire cake smooth with orange tinted buttercream. 

6.  Using a can of red or brown edible spray color, spritz the cake unevenly to make it look worn.  Just a few sprays, being careful to not overspray.    Then add the fondant decorations.  Pipe gray stripes on edges using a large round tip, such as a Wilton No. 5.  Pipe the "WALL" using a No. 3 tip in black.

7.  Insert the black metal neck rod, with the head attached.  Using skewers, insert the arms. Note - the stripes on the arms should be on the side.  I attached them wrong, but didn't notice until much later.  Position the wheel units with skewers as well.   Set the shoe in front, adding a bit of Oreo cookie crumbs for "dirt" and an bit of plant.  (I used some spinach leaves.  I didn't have Oreo crumbs, so I used graham cracker crumbs, Oreo would have been better.)  

This is why I make cakes:

R2-D2 - Difficult

Have a good picture handy to help with decorating.

1. Bake 8 round layers (8” is best, 9” okay). 

2.  Level each layer.  See: http://www.wilton.com/cakes/making-cakes/leveling-cakes.cfm  Do not skip this step!  Otherwise your cake will not be straight or stable! 

3. Using cake circles, create 4 2-layer cakes with buttercream icing between each layer.  Crumb coat with icing.

4.  Stack 3 of the cakes (to make a 6 layer cake) using dowels to separate each cake.  See: http://www.make-fabulous-cakes.com/tiered-cakes.html  Do not skip the dowels!  Your cake cannot stand without dowels!

 5.  To make cake pictured, cover with while rolled fondant. See: http://www.wilton.com/decorating/fondant/rolled-fondant.cfm  This is pretty tricky to do on such a tall cake, so it may take some practice.  Be sure the icing is dry before you lay the fondant on it.  Use a high quality fondant, such as Satin Ice - see my Rolled Fondant post for details.  Alternative 1: cover the 2 layer cakes with fondant, and just cover the "seam" with decorations.  Alternative 2:  frost smooth with white icing.

6.  Put the last cake on a thick silver cake drum.  Using a serrated knife, cut the dome shape.  Alternative, you can bake the last layer in a Pyrex bowl.  Frost with gray buttercream, and/or cover with gray rolled fondant.

7.  Tint fondant blue and gray.  Cut shapes from fondant for details (use sharp paring knife, cookie cutters).  Attach to cake by brushing very lightly with water.  (small brush or damp finger)

8. The red “eye” is the ball from my “track ball” style mouse. It really looked good – see if you have something handy to use for this!  Or else use a fondant sphere, rub with vegetable oil to make the ball shiny.

9. Decorate base with balls of fondant.

10. Create arms out of Styrofoam or Rice Crispy treats, cover with fondant, decorate and position.

Note – this cake is pictured on a stand using for decorating from Joann’s or Michael’s – it made a perfect base for R2!