Dan Baines

Fairy Rings and Monstrous Things

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Evil Cakes for Kids Part II - Living Cakes!

Baking for my kids is fun and I’ve come to realise that it draws many parallels with my work as a prop designer. The only real difference are the materials and that your final masterpiece is destroyed and devoured by hoards of kids ‘gangsta tripping’ on fizzy drinks and Haribo sweets.

To take my bakes to the next level I thought I would incorporate some elements of illusion, animation and sound to compliment the standard aesthetics and palatability of the bog standard cake. Having said that, I don’t think any of my cakes have been bog standard, but you get what I mean.

My first venture into what I have termed ‘living cakes’ was a Harry Potter inspired cauldron that is stirred by unseen hands for my son’s 6th Birthday.

I baked four chocolate cakes to give the cauldron the required height to install the mechanism. This time lapse video shows the basic construction.

The mechanism used for the ghostly stirring movement is the same method as used for the Harry Potter cauldrons. To the uninitiated, The Self-Stirring Cauldron is an enchanted type of cauldron invented by Gaspard Shingleton in the late 20th century that magically stirs potions on its own. However, in reality it’s just a simple motor controlled by a microprocessor with a stick stuck to it. The mechanism is housed in a glass vase which slots into the middle of the cake. This not only protects the cake from wires and moving parts but also acts as a reservoir which holds warm water and dry ice to create the classic Hammer Horror bubbling cauldron effect. To minimise the sound of a motor whirring away the stirrer was made from balsa wood to make it as light as possible. To give the stirring action a more irregular realistic motion, the stick was mounted on a bent metal bracket and purposefully off-centre. This gives the illusion that the stirrer is speeding up and slowing down when in fact it’s just turning at a steady rate.

In the base of the case I also placed a waterproof remote controlled led light which can be set to any desired colour and lighting pattern. I opted for a slowly morphing kaleidoscope of colours which combined with the bubbling smoke and disembodied stirrer created a mesmerising illusion for both the children and adults. The ghostly stirring action really had some parents scratching their heads.

Although the cauldron was voraciously hoovered up by the members of the party, the mechanism was removed and stored away for a later date or to be modded for some other creepy creation.

The next cake didn’t quite have the same visual impact as the cauldron but included an audible element as well as some fitting visuals.

This was the cake for my son’s 18th birthday. Being a huge gaming geek with a love for the greatest decade mankind has ever experienced, the 80s, one item sprang to mind that encapsulates the most defined era of our time - the Nintendo Power Glove.

I’m more of a vanilla sponge and jam chap myself but it seems all of my boys go wild for chocolate cake so this bake was no different. If nothing else, I can bake a great chocolate cake even though I don’t personally like it.

The black controls of the Power Glove were made from fondant icing and liquorice built over a pre-programmed LED screen that could display up to ten scrolling messages. A simple MP3 player module and speaker were also concealed inside the cake blasting out a Synth Wave soundtrack. This cake not only tasted great, it sounded amazing and probably worked better than the real thing!

The Devil Made Me Do It, pick a sin, any sin...

The great thing about a blog is that you're never sure who is reading it. Sometimes you wonder if anyone is actually reading it at all but every now and again your receive some form of reassurance that your posts don't just vanish into the electronic ether.

Last week I received a response to my 'The Devil Made Me Do It' blog post from 10th June. The reader kindly pointed me in the direction of a well known History Channel antiques hunting show based in the US. He recalled that in a very early episode of season 2 the team came across a barn in South Carolina owned by a crazy old hoarder who collected religious items.

One of the items the team found was a deck of cards that depicted sins. This sounded awfully familiar to the cards that accompanied the strange game I had acquired. So I set about trying to trace the exact episode through various channels, some legitimate and some not so. I eventually found the episode on a Russian site that hosted nearly every History & Discovery Channel program and their associates episodes as well as numerous other shows. I had strong doubts that the site was legal but armed with good virus protection and a fast internet connection I found what I wanted. For legal reasons I'm unable to upload the clip to YouTube but I will do my best to describe it and I have provided some screen shots.

I found the part of the show where the team tried with all of their persuasion and charm to get the serial spiritual hoarder to part with some of his loot which was proving easier said than done. Then from behind a rusty Coca Cola sign one of the show presenters pulled out an old box containing various standard church items, an old bible, a crucifix, order of service leaflets and a mysterious deck of cards.

The presenter remarked on the odd find and jokingly asked his partner in crime to "pick a card, any card!". He picks a card and reads it aloud, "Your Sin is blaspheming". He then briefly holds the card up so the back can be seen and there it was, the back of the card had The Devil Made Me Do It logo! The card was an exact match for the few I had in the studio and to know that there was another complete set in existence was unbelievable.

The most remarkable thing was that when the show presenter asked the old chap how much he wanted for the cards he replied "nah, you can have 'em, maybe they'll help you stay on the righteous path".

I then jumped straight to Google to source a contact number or address for the business featured in the show and minutes later I was composing an e-mail asking how much they wanted for the Sin deck!

I explained that I had a number of cards and an original The Devil Made Me Do It 'game' in various bits. I asked firstly if they still had the deck and secondly how much they were willing to sell it for.

They replied a few days later saying the deck wasn't for sale. They did however, offer to scan all of the cards and send me a pdf copy in return for keeping them in the loop on how the restoration of the original machine was developing.

So I now have a full deck of all 48 Sin cards from The Devil Made Me Do It. My personal favourite has to be the 'Eating Blood' card. It's almost incomprehensible to think that vampirism was still feared in 1950s America!

The actual card dimensions are a little larger than standard business cards so I cleaned up the pdf scans and combined them with artwork from the few card I had to produce a replica deck.

The restoration of the game is coming along nicely and I'll be blogging some images soon. The actual exterior is almost complete but the internal workings are way beyond my technical level.  As ironic as it sounds, the mechanism is so odd it could've been designed by the Devil himself!

 


 


 

 

 

© Dan Baines 2016