A sweet business case

I've been working with one of IBMs recent acquisitions since September as part of the team integrating them into Big Blue. It was a small company of 30 people or so and founded by 3 guys, Ian, Tom and Craig. In a nutshell Butterfly make backup and storage analysis and migration software which IBM had been using a lot prior to acquiring them. One of the main tools that Butterfly produce, outputs something called an Analysis Engine Report (AER), which is essentially a business case for customers to move their backup or storage environment to IBM products. Recently Craig decided to leave the company, and as a send off it seemed like a great excuse to make a Butterfly AER into a cake.

The raw materials

I opted for a fruitcake. I've iced a handful of cakes in the past, and quickly learned that covering a fruitcake in sugar paste is WAY less hassle than a sponge...so I took the easy option ;o). Baking the cake was pretty straightforward - I use a Nigella Lawson recipe for fruitcake, it seems to go down well and you don't need to muck around soaking stuff in alcohol months in advance.

100% edible

I toyed with the idea of trying to recreate all the graphs and text using icing, or handwriting it in edible pen, but decided it would probably look awful so instead I got an AER printed out onto an icing sheet. I used edibleprints.co.uk  - only took a day after I uploaded my photo for it to turn up and the printing was really good quality. I'd highly recommend them for anyone wanting to do something similar. The easy option here would be to just stick this sheet onto a cake, which would have looked ok but would have been a bit 1 dimensional and I wanted to do something a bit more flashy.

Finally!

Next up, covering the cake with marzipan & sugar paste  This was a total ballache. Actually, the marzipan was easy enough, maybe its a bit more robust than the sugar paste, but I had a nightmare with the icing.  I've never done a single cake this big and never a rectangular one. The problem I had was getting the sugar paste rolled out into approximately a rectangle and then when I got something roughly the right shape, it would tear and fall apart as I tried to move it onto the cake. I have to admit, after about a hour of rolling, tearing, re-rolling etc I was ready to quit and I came pretty close to binning the whole project in a fit of sugar paste induced rage. Fortunately I just about managed to get it onto the cake and it smoothed out to get something that was passable.

Ready to be assembled

I wanted to cut out of icing the various different sections of the report to give it a 3D effect. Felt like it should be easy, but I wasn't sure how I would get them onto the cake without them contorting themselves out of shape. Google didn't give me any clues, so after a bit of experimenting I figured out that if I rolled out the sugar paste onto some greased baking paper, cut out the shapes I needed and then kind of flipped them into place, I could then peel the baking paper off and they were still in the correct shape. I printed the AER out onto paper and cut out the various report sections so I had templates which I could use to cut the icing up into the right sizes.

From here on in it was plain sailing. I arranged all the sections on the cake, stuck them down with some edible glue and then cut the icing sheet up and slotted them in the right places. I'd done my maths slightly wrong and had to bodge a couple of bits to make everything fit, but in the end it looked pretty close to the AER I was modelling it on so no harm done. I'd already iced a board with dark green sugar paste, so carefully airlifted the cake in place, put some ribbon round the base (mainly to cover up all the dents and wonky bits) and it was done.

Craig with his cake

The finished article

After all that it turned out that Craig doesn't like fruitcake so didn't eat any. Whoops! I'm sure the rest of the Butterfly crew will help demolish it over the next few days ;o)

About time

Pulled pork with apple sauce

So I've toyed with this for a while, but decided now's finally the time to start a food related blog. I've got quite a few interests, some come and go depending what the flavour of the month is, but one thing that is constant is my love of food and cooking. I love baking (cakes mainly, for some reason I'm shit at baking bread) and over the past couple of years have developed a penchant for BBQ. Not British BBQ, but proper American slow cooked BBQ. Ribs, pulled pork, beef brisket etc, smoked for hours till the outside has a dark crunchy bark on it and the meat inside is tender and falling apart. Couple it with all manner of BBQ sauces, coleslaw, potato salad & cornbread and now we're talking. Lets be clear, I'm still partial to a good old British BBQ - sausages that have been incinerated to within an inch of their life, only identifiable by their fingerprints (can you fingerprint a sausage?) and a bit of chicken drumstick roulette (cooked properly or still a bit pink in the middle - take a bite and take your chances...) but there is a time and a place for it. I think the TV show Man vs Food inspired me to broaden my BBQ horizons; week in week out watching Adam Richmond traveling around the USA demolishing amazing food. He's basically got my dream job, so I shamelessly named this blog after the show.

Mum's 60th

Our wedding cake

Then there are cakes. I've baked and decorated a couple of notable cakes in the last few years: our wedding cake, mum's 60th birthday and currently embarking on a work related cake which I'll write a post about when its complete (if it turns out OK). I'm toying with a couple of spare time cake-related projects / businesses which may come to fruition this year, but any excuse to bake something and I usually jump at it. My 25th birthday came round recently, and to celebrate I baked about 200 cookies. Turns out I made more cookies than I have friends - some people had to eat 2 to shift them all before they went stale.


The Munns catering philosophy of  "50% too much food is the right amount of food" has been something I've lived by. If you can't make yourself slim, make those around you fatter. It's much more fun and a hell of a lot easier! Join me on my quest to make the best BBQ food in Hampshire and some pretty damn good cakes along the way too!