Geo Bake Off – Geologist Despair (by sarah)

I mentioned the Geological Society's Bake Off to Jean - this is the result - she's been planning it for weeks!

The girls are seriously proud of this 7 cake monstrocity.

They have certainly enjoyed eating it 🙂

There is a lot of hidden stuff that went into this cake.

One of the themes was mud which is why there is chocolate orange mud flows 🙂

But there were all sorts of challenges and Jeany decided she wanted to try and complete as many as possible.

So within the river valley there is structure for a cross section.

And then she just got plan creative - with the structure of the cake and I believe some youtube research.

These are the marzi-bones fossil human ancestors or related species buried in a cash by volcanic ash - they may or may not have already been dead when this happened some more excavation will have to occur to find out!

The top layer of the Mud Tower is a chocolate gravel lens between a sandy mud and a volcanic ash.

You can see the colour difference really well in this photo.

Here is Jean cutting open mud tower to reveal whats within.

Spoiler... the chocolate gravel lense.

Here's the river valley with birds foot delta - at this stage the volcano is dormant or extinct.

This is the main part of the cake with Mud Tower and the ammonite loaf as zoomed in bits and the past hidden behind the lush "hill".

Of course there is a hidden volcano and... erm Jurassic Park toilet death scene...

The geologist hammer was another challenge - but being Jean it is a geo-thor hammer so is the wrong shape (to be honest she sneaked a time travel train into it so I was amazed there was no tardis). I did the writing.

Within there is an ammonite - this one was completely and utterly Jean's own idea and it worked and she is soooo happy she is taking it into school tomorrow 🙂

This was the tense moment of cutting in and finding out if the idea had worked. It's a bit flatter than intended but we agreed it's had metamorphic stuff happen to it thanks to the volcanos proximity.

The cake did kind of over flow but that's not surprising - here's how it was made...

Did I mention that she called this cake collective - Geologist Despair.

Volcano before lava.

She did try to put structure inside the volcano but it didn't work that well.

The volcano was fun to put together - she remembered Dino-Mountian I'd made her for her 5th? Birthday 🙂

How the river valley was put together...

One time travel train and it's in a tunnel - the tunnel was the challenge 🙂

And before the tunnel, infact she did a lot of icing moderling for this.

Of course Mary pulled her weight too 🙂 Mainly with rolling out icing and smearing chocolate everywhere!

She did most of the Mud Tower by herself 🙂

Mary put chocolate gravel leaking out of an erroded side and some other bits including sticking out marzi-bones 🙂

Mud cracks were a challenge - Jean went with the existing cake cracks and made the lonely tree which was another of the challenges.

Lonely tree... did I mention the lonely tree?

Other general cakey making pics...

Creating the Marzi-Bones...

I really love this idea 🙂

Creating T-Rex...

This has been EPIC - it took 3 days to make the cakes - Alaric is taking Mud Tower into work tomorrow etc... Both girls have enjoyed it so much and of course we used home grown eggs. The cakes themselves range from chocolate orange to mint to vanilla and strawberry in flavour. There are three icings and marzipan involved and some of the cake is me friendly ie gluten free (the volcano) and some is Mary friendly and so on.

Jean was a little sad as she had meant to put Mary Anning in and a geological map too but she forgot and just don't ask her about how atomically correct her loo death scene is ok.