Elaine's Cooking Scrapbook: Ohio State "Block-O" Cake

In June '09 my aunt and a few other family members threw a "happy graduation"/"congrats on getting into medical school" party for my cousin Peter. He received his undergrad from The Ohio State University and was recently accepted to medical school at The Ohio State University, so when I offered to make the cake for the party, I knew it needed to be something Ohio State. So then I turned to Google (one of my favorite things to do online) and started to search for an idea on what kind of OSU cake I would make. What I found was many pictures of non-realistic, amateurish, ugly cakes, none of while I thought were good enough for my cousin Peter. So I decided on my own shape, style, and pattern of cake all together.

To make the Block-O shape I simply just made 2-half sheet cakes and stacked them on top of one another (which homemade butter cream in-between, of course) and cut all 4 corners off. In addition to the butter cream incing in-between the 2 cake layers, I also added a delicious raspberry filling that Peter has mentioned he liked in a previous cake I made. With the colors of icing I kept it very simple and stuck with scarlet, white, and black. It's hard to see from this picture, but I only iced the top of the cake in red; the sides were iced in white. To give the cakes edges a more finished look, I piped simple dots around the bottom and top edges as well as in-between the red and black coloring to give that area a little more definition. For the leaf, pre-dyed green fondant was used. I rolled and it out and cut the buckeye leaf free-hand, making it big enough to add a buckeye "candy" in the center. Audrey was nice enough to let me use one of her beautiful, homemade buckeye's in the center of the leaf so I wouldn't have to make a whole batch myself!

I've also added a few more pictures of the party. As you can see, it was a huge success and we cannot wait to throw an even bigger bash once Peter graduates from med. school. So far he has aced all of his tests, quizzes, and exams, making the rest of us "average folk" look bad. You go Peter!