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In my effort to show my fiance how much I love him along with trying to get linked in a gaming blog (ZOMG KOTAKU LOOK CAKE), I decided to spend quite a bit of cash to get Kelvin a surprise groom’s cake that was video game related. I know his favorite game of all-time is either The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past or Super Metroid (I forgot the order already), so I wanted to do one of those. I’ve already seen some pretty awesome Zelda cakes, so I’d figure I’d go for something Super Metroid related. The only Metroid-related dessert I’ve ever seen that was any good was some super-cute gelatinous metroid, so I was curious what something would look in the realm of cake. For this task, I enlisted the highly-Yelped cake artisan Debbie Goard of Debbie Does Cakes.

My first instinct was to go for Samus’ helmet, but then I thought that maybe it’d be weird to pretty much be eating Samus’ head. So I originally sent a request to make a cake looking like Samus’ gunship, based off this First 4 Figures statue. Oftentimes, her ship shares a lot of similarities with her helmet, so I thought it’d be a good substitute. But after some thinking (and consultation with other folks who’ve played Metroid), I went back to the helmet because it was more recognizable, even to gamers who haven’t played Metroid games. (For the Metroid nerds that suggested I do metroids or Mother Brain… come on, there’s a bunch of non-gamer old people at the wedding…)

I sent Debbie links to another First 4 Figures statue page and the Metroid Database, but she was still having a hard time deriving the shape. What I ended up doing was, when Kelvin wasn’t home, busting out Super Smash Bros. Brawl, going to the trophies section, and taking video of relevant Samus trophies, zooming in and rotating so that the helmet could be seen at all angles. I even went through the effort of beating Classic Mode to get another trophy for more reference. I made the videos flv and sent links of the videos to her.

Debbie was cool with the idea, despite being a non-gamer and having no clue as to what Metroid is. All communication was through email, though once the payment, reference links, and order form was sent and all details were finalized, I didn’t hear from her ever again. I never got a preview of the cake (though it seems like she posted it on her flickr the day before my wedding), but based on her past work, I was fairly comfortable she could pull something together. And indeed she did. The final product at the reception:

Awesome. I didn’t get to see Kelvin’s expression seeing the cake since he ditched the bridal party to hang out in the reception area prior to the official bridal party entrance, but I’m told by groomsmen and other nerdboys that he was pleased to see the cake. Kelvin told me that, before he saw it, people kept asking him about what the cake was, and he had no idea what they were talking about. Ever wondered what the inside of Samus’ head looks like? Well, here ya go:

Samus brains = chocolate cake with chocolate chips and mint buttercream. Kelvin’s a fan of mint chip stuff, so this was best closest custom flavor I could get with Debbie’s repertoire of flavors. The cake is a bit on the sweet and heavy side for me, especially in comparison to the main wedding cake from La Patisserie, but it wasn’t bad at all. You can see from the cake slice some sort of weird sugary clay stuff used for sculpting the front. (It’s the yellowy stuff in the slice picture. It tastes like… sugary clay.)

Overall, I’m pretty stoked with the final product. The restaurant originally thought it was the wedding cake, so it hogged the wedding cake table spot until the real wedding cake people arrived and had to convince the restaurant otherwise. Too bad I didn’t maximize my nerd cred by having a Metroid wedding cake as well. Yeah, too bad.

Note: I’ll add more pics from other people (from pro photog, different angles) when I get them.

Picture yoinked from Debbie Does Cakes’ flickr, prior
to exposure to high humidity (it POURED that day)

Edited 11/11 to add: Apparently a couple people have discovered the cake through Debbie’s flickr, including Geekologie and Metroid Quarantine, with the latter getting on Kotaku, and then GoNintendo and back to Metroid Database (we’ve come full circle!).

Debbie told Metroid Quarantine:

The cake was a mint chip cake hand carved from round cakes, stacked, and iced in buttercream and then covered in fondant. The metallic parts were made of belgian modelling chocolate and painted with silver highlighter dust. The entire cake was airbrushed to add color and dimension to the metallic parts as well. The cake was a surprise for the Groom, he and the bride are huge fans of the game.

And yeah, all the parts that were neither cake nor buttercream didn’t taste too good. (Fondant in general is quite nasty.) I don’t remember how the modelling chocolate tasted, but I still have half of the helmet in my freezer, so I’ll have to make note of how it tastes later.

New thing I learned today: The idea of a groom’s cake originated in the South. It’s a cake separate from the frilly main wedding cake that often reflects the groom’s interest. The legend surrounding the groom’s cake is that if a single woman takes a slice of the cake and puts it under her pillow the night she receives it, she will dream of her future husband.

Posted on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 at 11:21 pm in Wedding, Food, Video Games