555 Timer Chip Cake and Transistor Pops

Alright, who was supposed to bring cake for the LAN party?

More than RoHS compliant, make these edible treats shaped like electronic components.

So I had a bunch of snack cakes and cookies in the pantry to have with my afternoon tea. Might as well play with your food before you eat it.

Why not merge cookies and cake into some kind of sweet treat...and also make them in the shape of electronic components.

The hard cookies would be perfect to simulate the wire lead portions of the integrated circuit chip and the legs of the transistor.

You can cut a cookie with a steak knife. Since it is brittle, you want to "saw" the cookie with the serrated knife edge. Use a thin grater or zester tool to "sand/rasp" the cookie to final shape. Save and mix the cookie dust with ice cream to eat later.

Shape the legs of the 555 timer chip cake. Note that there are no chips in this chip cake, although, you can use brownies with chocolate chips as your base cake.

Slice and dice the cake to form the basic shape of your electronic component.

For our 555 timer chip, make a base to lift up the main body of the cake.

You can use different pieces of cake and "glue" them together with cake frosting.

I am not a master baker so I did not try to use chocolate ganache to coat the cake. I guess rolling fondant would be the other option.

I used a can of prepared cake frosting to decorate my cake.

Frosting sticks like napalm and gorilla glue so it will get everywhere. Use a small knife, thin cake spatula or putty knife to spread the frosting. You need to keep the tools clean so it floats out the frosting into a smooth surface.

I only had vanilla and chocolate frosting but if you wanted to make other electronic components like capacitors, Twinkies resistor cake, different forms of transistors or LEDs, you can tint the frosting with food coloring for other colors.

Pipe out frosting with a piping bag and tip or just pack into a small plastic bag and cut the corner to squeeze out.

If you have fancy tips for your piping bag, use the best one suited to make your lettering. I had something that piped out a tiny flat ribbon. It still takes some skill to letter, kinda like using a hot glue gun which dribbles and drags.

After the cake is frosted, attach the cookie wire leads.

And for final presentation or reference, plate on Forrest M. Mims Getting Started in Electronics themed doilies.

Enjoy!