Is It Cake? Home Edition

For Mother's Day, I made 4 fake wooden cake coasters and one real cake in the shape of a coaster. It was a fairly simple process, and worked quite well.

All you need for the fake cakes and real cakes are the following: Wood (9 mm if you can otherwise 6mm), access to a laser cutter, model magic clay (or any other air dry clay), cookie cutters, rolling pin, spray paint and cake spray paint (optional), actual cake of some kind (I just bought a cake)

1. The first step, and by far the most important one, is to make the real cake. For my project, I decided to make the cakes in the shape of a coaster for simplicity, but any flat shape should work very well.
2. Go and buy or make a cake. I bought a cake from Walmart, but making a cake would work fine. The only thing is to ensure it doesn't already have fondant on it. If you want the cake to be good after the game and want it to still be moist, I recommend this recipe: Vanilla Cake Recipe
3. Next, cut out however much cake you'll need to assemble your cake. The cake will not fall into place, so expect to have to crumble and reshape it. Since I couldn't make a cake, I didn't have any buttercream, but if you have buttercream and your cake won't stick, buttercream should do the trick.
4. Get a good amount of fondant. I bought a pack of fondant and made a very small cake, and I almost ran out of fondant. You can choose to do a color or white. If you plan on spray painting your fake cakes, choose white and spray paint the others. If you're going with solid colors, colored fondant would work.
5. (Optional) Cookie Cutters! If you want to put something on top of your cake, you'll want to do this step. You can either buy, 3D print, or hand carve designs out of fondant. It's very important to make sure you have enough fondant for this. I 3D printed my cookie cutters and went with a fleur de lis. You could make the shape out of cake, but it is risky and crumbles easily.
6. If you did step 5, follow this step; otherwise, ignore it. If you spray paint this cake, I recommend spray painting the topper first and then the cake. Carefully remove the topper and center it on the cake. It should stick, but buttercream or cream cheese should make it stick.
7. (Optional) Buy some food-color spray paint and spray paint your cake. The ones I bought had very little, so ensure you have a spray paint supply.

Make an Inkscape file with your shapes for the decoys. Use the nodes tool to deform your shapes unless you want all the cakes to look the same and be perfectly straight. Because I only did 4 circles, I used the circle tool 4 times and then the node tool to deform them. After that, save them as an SVG and laser-cut them. You most likely know how to use a laser cutter, but if you don't, here is a tutorial on how to use one: How to use a laser cutter

For this step, you need only some air-dried clay, a rolling pin, wood pieces, and cookie cutters (optional). Here is the link to buy the clay: Air-Dried Clay. Tip: This clay WILL stick to paper, so putting it on a wooden surface works excellent; don't put a paper layer down to protect your counter. Start by mixing your clay colors. I needed to mix about four colors for each fake cake to replicate the thickness of the actual cake. After that, roll out the clay and drape it over the wooden pieces. Draping it over gives it a fondant vibe and adds another layer of illusion. For small details, you can use a scalpel (the set I used had one) to add small tears of cracks in the clay to look more like fondant that tore. Next, take your cookie cutters and cut out the shape from a piece of clay. I didn't mix colors for the cookie-cutter layers, but you might need to combine a color or two if you use too thick of a fondant. If you don't want to do that, you can stamp the clay already on your wood piece if you want a different look.

If you don't have spray paint or don't want to spray paint the fake cakes, ignore this step. The clay can be spray painted, so don't worry about buying special spray paint. If you don't have spray paint, you can order some from Amazon or go to a nearby store like Target and buy some. Start by placing the fake cakes on a piece of cardboard. They should have dried by now; if not, let them finish drying. Put the spray paint can a few inches away and push the button down. Try to be precise in making sure you spray paint the toppers a different color, or if you don't care, you can spray paint them the same color. Adding a few spritzes of another color if you'd like to create texture. I then took a paper towel while the spray paint was still drying to remove a little color and texturized it more.

Find a hiding spot where the gift receiver won't find them. You DO NOT have to refrigerate the cake unless you really want to keep it fresh. Make sure to put them inside, preferably, or don't make the same mistake I made of putting them outside while the gardener came. Make sure the clay is dry or close to dry, and put the real cake in a Ziploc bag or Tupperware to keep it safe. When it comes time to remove the fake cakes and play the game, remove them slowly to avoid breaking the clay, as they are very fragile. Don't squeeze them, as that will crack the clay.

Set up everything, and play the game. Give the guesser about 20 seconds and have them try to guess which is the actual cake. Then, take that cake or decoy and cut it. If it's fake, don't cut too hard, or you might break your knife. If it's really a cake, cut through, and tell them they won. If you'd like, have them take another guess if they failed on their first guess. I managed to trick my mom! You can watch the Netflix show with host Mikey Day: Is It Cake? (Netflix Subscription Required)