Baking In Faith: Carving a Couch Cake

Back in September, I had this great idea to surprise my husband with a special cake for his birthday. I wanted to create a couch and have us and our pets on it. We love to go out on adventures together, but our favorite way to relax is cuddling on the couch watching our favorite movies and shows. The story goes (like most of my brilliant ideas) that it got busy making cake for other people and his deployment schedule kept changing so this brilliant idea was never created. No dessert, in fact, was made for his birthday. I did make a nice dinner, but served him the pieces of a leftover dome from a cake I made for a customer. Another idea failed. But at least he technically had cake!

Another brilliant plan had failed (story of my life), so I forgot about it and figured I'd try to be a better wife next year. Last Friday I got a surprise phone call from my husband while he was still at sea. They were going ashore and getting on a military flight to come back home before the next part of the excersice started. Yay!!! Always a great surprise to have him home even if only for a few weeks! This cake I had planned to make in September immediately came to my mind (thank you Jesus!) and I resolved, without looking at the timeline, to create a couch cake with our family sitting on it.

It was a wirlwind of a weekend, and I was exhausted by the time I collected my husband from the airport, but it was all worth it! He was completely surprised and so excited to see us and our furry kids looking like we would during a normal evening at home (yup, hearts really can be seen floating above our heads wherever we go together!). Because it was for my love, I was able to put in lots of extra details including his favorite reindeer comfy pants, Emma (our dog's) pink belly, our wedding rings on fingers, his high regulation haircut and my painted toes and comfy pants.

There is no greater joy than creating something special for the one's you love and this certainly is no exception. It is out of pure love and complete joy that I lost sleep, set aside the messes in the house (those of you who know me understand how hard that is for me!) and put so much detail into this original and unique cake just to put a smile on my husband's face after too much time away. I am greatly blessed with a godly husband and it's been so fun to make this sweet gift of sugar for him.

"So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves."

Philippians 2:1-3

Carving a Couch Cake

I chose to use two, six inch cakes for this design. Larger cakes could be used, however that requiers larger gumpaste figures to match the dimensions. Here are the cuts I made using a serrated knife for each of the cake layers:

The pieces look like this layed out for assembly. The two identical top pieces are for the couch back and are the only pieces that will be standing up. The four central pieces are all pushed together laying just as they are and the small pieces on the left and right sides are layed on top of the semi-circle pieces they are sitting next to.

The assembled cake will look like this. The center line in the cushion is carved as well as the line to define the bottom edge of each cushions. Carving the sharp edges of the couch arms and back creates a more realistic look.

Using buttercream, join all the pieces together.

Apply a layer of buttercream for the crumb coat smoothing out the frosting with a viva papertowel and your hand.

The back of my couch began leaning backwards. To prevent it tipping over once the fondnat was on, I added two dowel rods, one on each side, to offer stability.