Jam and Bread

Saturday we celebrated my step father John's birthday. He happens to be the biggest jam/marmalade/preserves eater I have met. I am not sure many mornings have passed that he has not had a slice of toast with marmalade on it for breakfast. When I say marmalade on it, I mean really heaped on - it is more like he eats toast with his marmalade. So, it was this love affair that led Sam to the idea of making a jar of jam for his cake. We added some toast to go with it and we had our cake, actually cakes.

The jar was made from sour cream chocolate cake with sour cream frosting. I baked the cake in a sheet pan and then Sam cut out the six layers by hand. I frosted them and stacked five of them up to create the jar. Skewers were used to keep the layers from sliding. The last layer was set aside for the lid.

I used marshmallow fondant to create the jar and painted it using a mixture of pigment and vodka. The label and price tag,

the bar code

and the nutritional information (this was a must in Spencer's eyes)

were made by using edible markers on rolled fondant.

Sam made the "toast" by cutting out the bread shapes from a vanilla sour cream cake and dabbing the sour cream chocolate frosting on the sides to make it look more like bread.

The butter was made from fondant and then we used some gel frosting to give it the sheen of melted butter.

John was very pleased with his cake and Sam and I had fun making it together.