Leonidas Cake and a Whole Lot of Faith in Mom

First off let me start out by explaining to you the cake that my son really wanted.  He is a huge fan of the movie "300" and wanted a cake of the main character Leonidas.  In his vision, Leonidas was posed in his famous open mouth, snarling, teeth bared kind of way with his shoulder back ready to launch a spear.  He wanted a 3D cake from the waist up, at least.  "You have to show his abs, mom" he insisted.  Of course I already knew that.  What's a cake without abs! Duh.

I thought and thought about how I was going to pull off this most amazing cake that I was trying to imagine.  I thought of all of the support and power tools I would need to do this.  Then my vision would fall short with Leonidas' face tearing apart and falling downward and gravity wreaking havoc on it.  After all cake is a soft medium to work with and not as easy and it may look.  I very quickly reminded myself that I do not have the knowledge to do such an elaborate cake.  I am self taught and have never had a single lesson.  But, my son only turns 16 once and he really had a lot more faith in me than I had in myself.  What to do....what to do.

Right then a light bulb came on!!  You can't just talk a 16 year old boy into something simpler when he has his mind set.  It had to be a clever and thought out rebuttal.  So I went to him and asked him what he thought the one moment in time was that made Leonidas the legend he has become.  He thought for a moment, his brow furrowed, but he couldn't figure out what I wanted him to say so he let me lay out my dramatic scene before him.  Well let me sell it to you and see if I could have changed your mind.....

Again, what is that one moment that Leonidas became more than just the leader of an army?  That precious moment where he would live forever in history?    He was just a rebel to those that wanted the change to happen, but there are many rebels that never even became a sentence on the pages of history.  There was a moment that he became more than a mere mortal man.  He gave his life for what he so truly believed in.  People want that kind of bravery; that kind of honor; that kind of courage.  (I was really pouring all I have into this heartfelt speech.)  So, to answer the original question, it was the very moment that he died that he became legendary!  That very moment!!!  Had he not died the story would not be as it has became today.  He died with integrity and grit.  He became immortal the moment his heart stopped beating.

Do you see what I did there?  Of course, I made it as dramatic as I could but, I sold him on the idea and got him to accept a horizontal cake!  Score one for mom!  Now to get to work on what we had finally agreed upon.  I couldn't make him an average cake since he did let me off the hook a little bit.  I had to at least make it large enough to be memorable.  

I must apologize for the low quality pictures.  Our camera was not charged and once I got started I did not want to quit.  These pictures are cell phone pictures but you can at least get the idea from them.

I drew out a sketch and decided to make the torso out of cake and the extremities out of rice krispies.  I could have done it all out of cake but he likes rice cereal treats and it did make it easier, albeit heavier.

 

 Rough sketch to give me basic proportions

The torso is strawberry cake.  All other extremities were homemade rice cereal treats.

I had baked a 12x18 inch strawberry with vanilla swirl cake and carved out the body then just rolled and shaped the rice cereal treats into the basic shape I wanted.

Cake covered in buttercream.

The next step was to fully cover it in homemade buttercream.  I knew it was not going to be easy for me to roll out a large enough piece of marshmallow fondant  that would cover and give me enough time to give the details I needed to each section.  I don't have a sheeter since I bake at home so I figured out where the seams would be covered and worked from there.

Torso and arms covered in homemade marshmallow fondant

I started with the arms first and covered them then worked with a ball tool to give him "muscle definition".  Then I rolled out more marshmallow fondant and covered the cake portion that would be his torso.  I worked quickly with my fingers to decide where to add his defining features and then used a ball tool to make them more enhanced.

There is a short break in pictures for the simple fact that I was working feverishly to get it all done and it honestly slipped my mind to take pics.  I am new at this whole blogging process so it may take me a bit to ease into telling the "whole story" but at least you get the feel for it.

The part that the pictures cannot show is that I covered each leg one by one and, again, shaped his muscles using my fingertips.  After all, our hands are our best tools.  After getting all of the flesh toned areas covered then I made his ears and attached them and tinted more fondant in a dark brown leather color and gave him his undies.  My son would argue with me that they are NOT undies.  In his eyes they are battle uniforms so I guess we will go with his remark instead. It did sound more manly.  It just did not look like Gerard Butler though, so I slipped a bit more fondant underneath them to make it look more accurate to the movie.  If you are going to be portrayed in cake you better make it manly! ;)  Then I put on the leather straps around his shoulders that holds his cape into place and made nipples for him.  Then his shoes with wrist and shin guards came next to finish up the dark brown colored fondant.  Next,  I colored black fondant and quickly made his features on his face and head.  The only thing left to do was his cape.  I dyed the remainder of the fondant red and draped it around him like the clip from the movie that I now had paused on the scene on the television, and cleaned up my workspace. He was looking decent but still not what I wanted.  As you can see by the above pictures, he was a bit lighter in color and just sort of drab.  I got the airbrush out and used brown food coloring to give him a tan. Much better!  He looked much more finished then and I was proud of it.

My son wanted to have arrows sticking out of it, now that he has fully embraced my idea of having the death scene be the cake, but I was running a bit low on time and figured he would be impaled enough by having 16 candles stuck out of him.   

By now, the camera was back up and running so I was able to get a picture of him with his 16th birthday cake.  I think he was happy and that made it all worth it!

Empowerment of the Woman Hunter

I am a woman and I hunt.  I have have hunted and enjoyed it for as long as I can remember.  I was never taught that there was a gender issue involved when it comes to hunting.  My anatomy has nothing to do with why I love to hunt.  I hunt because I loved those early mornings in the woods with my family. I love nature.  I love the smell of the woods, the earth, the trees, the flowers,and even the moisture in the air. I love watching the animals in their natural habitat; the birds fluttering around from spot to spot and the squirrels working hard in the fall to prepare for winter.  I love the sounds of nature and trying to figure out what made the sound if I had not heard it before.  I truly love it all.  I was immersed in it as a child and I fondly recall those memories even still while I hunt.   Both of my parents hunted.  My mother has as many success stories as anyone else in my family.  I do not really recall her bow hunting, but not because she was a woman and there was a different social acceptance on it; the reason she didn't is because she preferred the rifle and did well with it.  My parents taught me how to shoot, how to sit quietly, how to track, and how to imitate the sounds that nature makes.  We may or may not have seen much in the way of what we were hunting but we did  enjoy ourselves very much.  The same things they taught me as a child I now pass on to my children. 

As I have gotten older I  was told that it was strange that I hunted and loved it so much.  I was not trying to make a statement by carrying on the traditions of my family.  I just loved it.  Now that I am older the list of  things that I love about hunting has grown.  I love taking the animals that we have taken and making a meal for my family from it.  We often feast on wild game that one of us have taken.  These animals and fowls feed us very well and we often share with those that love the meat but choose not to hunt. 

We cannot really say that it is traditional for the men to hunt and the women to take care of the home.  There are many tribes of people throughout the centuries that have gladly shared both of these responsibilities.  The Crow tribe of North America, the Aka people of central Africa, the Agta people of the Phillipines, the Inuit people of the Arctic, and the Martu people of Australia are all different groups of people that gender roles and responsibilities are shared.  The women could hunt and fish, as well as the men sewing and taking care of the children if the community needed it.  These mentioned are only five tribes of thousands of hunter-gatherers from around the world, living in different environments, demonstrating that women are socially and biologically capable of hunting large game, providing further evidence that the rigid gender roles of modern Western culture are not an inherent characteristic of the human species, but merrily labels that we have adopted over time and limited the capabilities of who we could be.

I often hear that women need to "empower" other women to hunt.  I have to admit that this saying bothers me quite a bit.  According to the dictionary the word empower means "to give someone the power or authority to do something."  Women hunting is not a new thing so that phrase baffles me.  By saying women are empowering other women to hunt implies that women are suppressed and needing permission from others to hunt.  Why, especially in this day and age,  would a woman have to be told or made to feel "empowered" to do anything?  That phrase only feeds in to the insecurities that just because you are a woman you are not "good enough".   If that phrase holds true then who are we looking to for permission to hunt?  Is it our husbands?  I doubt that, because most men I know would love for their wives or girlfriends to hunt.  Is it other women?  Surely not.  If a woman chooses to hunt then it should be because she loves it and wants to learn more about it and not because another person gives her permission to do so.  She should do it to provide food for her family and knowledge to better herself as a person.   Is it society?  In my experience "society" seems to be very flawed when it comes to gender roles.  Society tells us that sex sells, so many women hunters fall into the trap of thinking that they must be "sexy" to be able to hunt or be a part of the hunting community.  There is a stark contrast between the scantily clad women trying to sell you camouflage in a bikini when the actual purpose of camouflage is to not reveal yourself.  Many clothing companies in the hunting industry try to accentuate the female form instead of it's usefulness on the hunt.  Sure sex sells but if you are truly "selling sex" then is that not a form of prostitution? Of course, I say that "tongue in cheek" because the last thing female hunters need is someone trying to hold them back but I used those words to make you think. I want you to see how little sex and hunting has to do with each other.  If we enter the beautiful world of hunting or shooting under the facade that we must make it sensual,  it will ultimately limit who we can become. Instead of "empowering" each other, since we have found out how flawed that word is, we need to "equip" each other to be the best hunter that we are capable of being.  Out of all of these just discussed society is the one that turns hunting sexual but again what does that really have to do with hunting!

I am often asked what do I think about all of the new equipment on the market for women hunters.  Some of it coming in pinks and other colors.  I am actually in favor of those items as long as they have proper function.  If having a pink string on your bow or pink accessories on any of your hunting gear helps you love your equipment and like hunting then I am by all means for it.  I think they do have their place and a little feminine look to your equipment is not a bad thing.  That is merely personal choice.  Many men enjoy making their equipment personal as well so there is no need for insecurities with the color you choose to make your own property personal.  Making something your own by adding a personal touch may do absolutely nothing for the hunt but if it makes you love it and gives you a higher regard for it then do it!

I think women hunting is great.  I think more women should be in the woods but I think the best way to get more women hunting is to raise them to be hunters.  To honor and respect the game they pursue and to keep that part of our heritage alive.  Instead of focusing on only women being in the woods, as they have been since the world began, I believe we should focus on all children learning the proper ways hunting and handling weapons and to respect the animal that they have chosen to provide food for themselves. Another way is to invite new hunters that may not have been raised as hunters into the woods with you.  To help them find the knowledge they seek to become better hunters and to be able to cook what they have claimed.  I do not think that this is "empowering" future hunters.  I believe that it is "equipping" them to be self sustaining.  We should teach both children and new hunters that just because society perceives something to be abnormal that it doesn't make it right or wrong.  Society has a funny way of changing over time and cannot ultimately be trusted to lead us in the right direction.