Happy Birthday AFRICOM

In case you didn't know, AFRICOM is turning one year old today. So I made a cake.

Actually, I was commissioned by my husband to make a cake to celebrate the birthday of US AFRICOM, the newest US Military Command. My husband is a poli-sci kind of guy, and he studies this sort of thing for a living. Yesterday after lunch he called me with a request to "make a cake shaped like Africa. Can you do that? For tomorrow morning?"

Uh, sure. No problem. So, faster than you can say Burkina Faso, I just whipped out my Africa-shaped cake pan and baked away...just kidding. This baby took a while--a lot of sketching and planning, then a lot of piecing and gluing with ganache frosting. The cake itself is a delicious buttermilk base inside, and it's cut from a few cakes and reshaped to resemble the continent. I used a bunch of maps to get it right, and while I was pretty ambitious about the whole thing, I had to stop short of doing outlines of 53 countries. I really liked the waterline I added in blue sanding sugar, though, and I especially love the badge I made for the top. Look at the little islands.

AFRICOM is probably not on the minds of most people that look at my blog, and yet, it's worth taking a look to see what our military does.  You can read about it more on the well-designed official AFRICOM website and in this recent article about it.   My favorite summary is here at The New Atlanticist.   

All in all, the AFRICOM cake project took most of yesterday.  When I finally stopped after 11 pm last night, I was so happy with how it came out.   The poli-sci guy and I were up at 5 this morning admiring it and taking photos, so I think he's happy with it, too.  Maybe this is why I get those lovely gifts!!