- We are visiting Kate Sullivan today at Cake Power
and she makes hyper-realistic cakes,
breaking the norm by making edible sculptures.
I'm thinking right away this is something
that requires time and a lot of patience.
I don't have a ton of patience,
not really known for my patience.
Hopefully Kate will help me to create
something that doesn't look like cake.
Let's give it a shot.
(upbeat music)
So today, we're gonna make a polar bear
coming up out of the water,
just the head peeking out of the ice.
- I love anything animal related.
And I see that we have some
polar bears for inspiration here.
So where did Cake Power get its start?
- Well I'd been working in magazines for a really long time,
and I would have a friend who was working
at a food magazine and on deadline,
and be like, you know those cakes you're making
all the time, in your spare time?
Could you do one for inside this magazine,
I'm working on?
And it was really organic.
The first cake I ever did for publication
was for Time Out magazine and they rented a full page.
And then I kind of thought,
maybe I should quit my day job. (laughs)
(energetic music)
I'm gonna attach this cake to this cake
with the ganache. - Ganache.
- Were gonna use these as a guide to cut out the cake.
So I wouldn't say this is a great first cake,
but-- - Oh good.
- once you're doing it for a while,
it doesn't have a lot of internal structure.
- I feel like now is a good time to mention
that my artistic ability is just second grade level.
That's what you're working with.
- I love second graders. (Katie laughs)
It's gonna be great.
It's gonna be really great.
- Do you still wanna eat cake scraps
or are you totally over it?
- I've had enough (laughs)
- I did a very short, pastry stint in restaurants
and I thought I like struck gold at the time.
And then after a week, I just didn't
even wanna look at sugar.
- Yeah.
And again, like keeping the board... (laughs)
- Cause it's hard to not be eating
all these cake scraps right now.
What would surprise people the most
about the hyper-realistic cake verses
a traditional, besides as I'm starting to see
(Kate laughs)
the amount of work and time that goes into it.
- I think the biggest surprise is
when we cut into it and then it's
actually delicious that is always like,
"Oh, I didn't expect it to also taste good."
- Right it's important.
It should be. - It's huge.
This is cake and butter cream.
So I wanna start, the head actually comes out like this.
(fun music)
- Right now, my bear head shape is that of a primate.
(Kate laughs)
(fun music)
I could not make French macarons for the life of me.
And all the cooks, they were like,
"Oh are you making Mickey Mouse heads again?"
Cause they were all stuck together and flat
and it was a huge source of frustration.
How long does it generally take to complete
a cake, start to finish?
- I feel like this is kind of a two-day cake.
So there's baking and making all the ingredients,
and then there's letting everything set up
in the refrigerator.
There's a lot of steps involved.
- Right.
- Everything is dependent upon the cake being cold enough.
So now based on the difference between
when we originally cut it, like it's so solid.
You know. - It is.
- It's really stable. - Huge difference..
Right.
But, you know it's cake.
Someone's gonna eat it.
It's all good.
(celebration music)
- And then you're pretty much there.
We're gonna start looking at where we want your eyes to be.
And make a little space for them.
And where the eyebrows are
and start building that up. - Okay.
This is the part I feared.
The fine detail.
This is where all the artistry comes in
that I lack.
- But I think you're gonna surprise yourself.
I think it's looking really good.
- I think I'm surprising you right now.
- I'm just going to start right in.
- Okay.
- And put a thin coat of ganache over the whole thing.
(fun music)
- This is turning into like a Pinterest fail.
Do we have to turn these towards the camera? (laughs)
I'm like...
Yup, mmhm.
We're still on that same path.
(festive music)
Elephant.
(Kate laughs and gasps)
- [In background] It does look like an elephant.
- That is a great elephant, so here's the thing.
Maybe you're making an elephant.
- We're done.
- Cause that is awesome.
(Festive music)
This highly technical tool of toothpicks taped together,
is pretty handy for making fur.
And we'll start on the back.
- This looks like I'm using toothpicks.
That looks like fur?
- I kind of like at parties, when you serve
stuff like this, there's always someone
who wants to bite the ear off.
(Katie laughs)
And there's always someone else
who's very disturbed by that.
Alright so, ears, eyes,
- I'll take the craziest ones.
Wow, it's just the whole thing just
comes to life with the eyes.
Oh my gosh, I'm gonna leave it like that.
Go back.
You're beautiful.
- So this is the powdered food color
and I'm gonna add some lemon extract
to make it into sort of a syrupy kind of consistency.
- This smells so good.
- It does, right? - I love lemon.
- I think this is my favorite part,
like when I can really see it coming together.
It's sort of, it's a finishing touches.
- The payoff
- Yeah, you can sort of see that.
- Once the eyes went in, really, it sort of came to life.
- I think you're really gonna like it
when the nose goes on also.
- I've never paid this close attention
to a polar bear's nose. (Kate laughs)
He just got so friendly.
What a difference in these final details.
(fun music)
(Katie making a showy noise)
(Kate laughs)
- So how do you think I did?
- Like I feel like this is a great character.
- I love it. - I love him.
- It was a really, really fun process.
I just, I really hope people realize
how much work goes into making one single cake.
It's just, it's such attentiveness to detail.
It's unbelievable to me.
- Well I think you did a great job.
And I like how you did the whole interspecies thing,
(Katie laughs)
your elephant, and then the otter--
- It morphed into a few different animals along the way.
- That was good.
- But it sort of resembles a polar bear.
- It does, no it does.
- Thank you so, so much.
This was awesome.
(upbeat music)
I'm gonna take a bit out of my little friend here.
But if you enjoyed this episode
and you'd like to see more, click here.
- And the idea is you, like the more surface area,
the better, right?
Because it means that, that air's getting
trapped in the candy.
So--
- How come mine's not as nice as yours?
Yeah.