Sunday, October 11, 2009

Sunday Sweets: Steampunk

Sunday, October 11, 2009

If you don't know what Steampunk is, I highly recommend you do some web surfing to find out. Just make sure you have several hours to spare; I guarantee you'll find some aspect of this style to fall in love with.

Anyway, this past week the Great White Snark beat me to the clockwork punch by posting a gorgeous Steampunk cake. So in retribution (why yes, I am that petty) I shall now trump his post by featuring several gorgeous steampunk cakes. Hah! Take that, Snarky-boy!

First, a sweetly feminine Steampunk butterfly:

(Submitted by Delaney A. & made by Sprinkles Custom Cakes)

Next, here's one inspired by a Penny Arcade game:

(Submitted by Carolina Y. & made by Clever Cake Studio [more pics at the link])

I love the rich simplicity of this one:


Check out the sweet detailing:

(Submitted by Juliette W., originally posted by The Steampunk Workshop, & made by babycakes. [More pics at the Steampunk link])

It's hard to believe this next one is actually cake:

(By Eric Woller of MeMe's Treat Boutique. More pics here.)

A consumable copper cake cephalopod. Excellent.

How about some Steampunk wedding cakes?

(Found on this Flickr stream, and made by The Cakery.)



(From exoskeletoncabaret's Flickr stream, and made by Mike's Amazing Cakes.)

Check out those gears!


Here's a spectacular groom's cake:

(From BillGlover's Flickr stream, & made by Bronwen Weber)

One more view - just 'cuz it's so darn cool:


Do you have a cake you'd like to nominate for Sunday Sweets? Then e-mail it to me at Sunday Sweets [at] Cake Wrecks [dot] com.

- Similar Sweets: (Dr.) Horrible Sunday Sweets

Unknown said...

I don't have a clue as to who/what Steampunk is (and I don't have a large chunk of time right now to search it out), BUT, I do know pretty cakes when I see them! Gosh, love the one with all the gears! Is it really all edible?

Sunday Sweets is an amazing feature to view . . . just love it!

Lossecorme said...

I'm a mechanical engineer, and all these gears just made my day!

Penny Hubcap said...

As a steampunk goddess, I hardily approve.

jkelsofarrell said...

Thank you! I love Steampunk and these cakes are amazing.

unmitigated me said...

Love me that butterfly...and the groom's cake at the end looks a bit like a modified Dalek!

Carol Q said...

coooool - I never imagined steampunk cakes. these are brilliant!

Anonymous said...

Tremendously hip!

Unknown said...

Hear hear! My mouth literally dropped open when I saw these.

Love steampunk. LOVE.

Unknown said...

Two thing I really like. Steampunk and Cakes, Woo Hoo!

Kaede said...

That last one looks like a Dalek as envisioned my a steam punk artist.

Danica said...

I only recently discovered Steampunk, but I love it. And wow. Those cakes are AMAZING. I'd have never thought of steampunk cake! I'm linking this post to a few friends who I know will appreciate it. :)

Unknown said...

Mike McCarey = God of Cakes.

I'm still squeeing like a teenage girl to be able to see him judging at the Austin cake show in a few months: http://thattakesthecake.org/

I feel like having him as a judge means I need to make my entry that much better. His kind of talent inspires others to greatness.

joyce said...

Our first stop last weekend, ok it was an hour the wrong way, on our planned road trip to KC was to Arcon in IL. This year's theme to the con was steam punk! The costumes were incredible, should have had one of these cakes there. Got some great pics of wonderful costumes. Also got a great pic of my girls with Peter Mayhew .. not steam punk but still way cool. Oh don't tell me you don't know who HE is? Only Chewbacca himself!

Thanks to today's posting I can now get my steampunk friend's hooked on your blog!

TesoriTrovati said...

I make custom jewelry and Steampunk is all the rage. My favorite things to work with are found objects...particularly those with a grungy or old timey edge...skeleton keys are my main motif and they are fascinating to me. I also use watch gears and door hardware.... I like to mix the old with the new... but I would never have thought about using that as a theme for a cake! And gorgeous ones I might add. I love Cake Wrecks and glad to hear that things are going better for you! Enjoy the day! Erin

Stacey said...

6th photo down, the wedding cake. I don't know who the baker is, but the cake topper came from Builder's Studio on Etsy. I love their stuff!

Gary said...

Mind-blowingly cool cakes!
But is that shiny metallic stuff edible? If so, what is it?

Ekio Locatiare said...

*Squeels like a little girl* I love steampunk and these cakes are just too neat ^-^

I love the details and all the gears!

Wenonah4th said...

Looks very Verneian.

K. said...

Wow, those are amazing. I'm going to have to go look up what this steampunk stuff is about!

Sora said...

Those are amazing!
I totally want one.

Katie (Kali) said...

Steampunk! Steampunk! Steampunk!! You have made my week!!

Jedijson said...

Those are AWESOME!!!! I *love* the steampunk look--I'm trying to figure out how to mod my laptop into steampunk, in fact. But I digress.

These cakes are ome of the coolest things I have seen since the Star Wars cakes a while back.

DaniFae said...

Oh I love steampunk! Beautiful cakes.

That said, Jen, I want you to know this site is having a horrible effect on me. My husband and I were talking about things we couldn't have and I responded with, "I want sprinkles."

Glory von Hathor said...

Clever as they are, all that metallic icing is making my amalgam fillings hurt. Like when you missed a bit of tinfoil off the KitKat wrapper. Ouch!

Amara InSeattle said...

I am one of your Twitter Followers, @amazinglyamara . Thanks so much for the steampunk cake review. In Seattle we are having a Steampunk convention soon: www.steamcon.com and I am sure the community is going to love it. If you find any gothic lolita cakes www.innocenteseraphim.com would love to hear about that!

crownring said...

Don't know about you all, but if the last one (Pseudo-Dalek-looking) starts yelling "Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate", I'm outa here!

LOL!

I'd NEVER heard of "Steampunk" until I began looking at the multitudes of offerings on Etsy. I love the idea of it all!

scrappin{jewlz} said...

omg, those are SOOO cool!

There are a lot of SteamPunk things (not cakes) on etsy too - www.etsy.com - that's where I found out about it!

Katy said...

I've never heard of Steampunk (will have to google this afternoon), but those cakes are really cool! :)

:::b r a n d i::: said...

I have never heard of Steampunk either, but man these cakes are fabulous!

Anonymous said...

Very cool looking, but metal and gears just don't look appetizing to me!

Unknown said...

Gorgeous! Kind of reminds me of the musical Wicked...which might be a fun Sunday Sweet.

Unknown said...

Hmm . . . well, I would have classified all these cakes as wrecks, so this week is gonna feel extra wrecky with no Sunday Sweets to punctuate it. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

Clever Cake Studio said...

Thanks for posting my cake :) I've been planning to do another, larger and more elaborate steampunk cake sometime soon - maybe I'll get lucky and see it on here someday ;)

The metallic stuff is a paint made with edible luster dust and a bit of grain alcohol. It can also just be brushed on as powder for a more delicate sheen.

Lucille Ball Jr. said...

amazing! i don't know what they are, but, amazing all the same.

archersangel said...

very cool cakes!

Lindsay said...

I adore the Steampunk aesthetic but am very much against the idea of slapping some gears onto something and calling it Steampunk...

That said, some of these cakes are lovely. Others just sort of say "Meh, it's got gears.... It's Steampunk, right?".

Little Lovables said...

wow, I love steampunk style and am amazed at these cakes!!

dharmamama said...

Whoa!! I am blown away by the wood & copper "finishes" on those cakes. Holy moly!!

After years of being afraid to google steampunk, because I was afraid of being sucked in for hours and having my world changed, cake finally inspired me to do it!! So very cool.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, it makes my teeth hurt, too!

Anonymous said...

It just occurred to me that truly good bakers are actually always on the cutting edge. They have to be, to create cakes for birthdays and weddings featuring the next great thing.

Edgy Bakers sounds like a good name for a band.

Alisa @ A stitch in between said...

This was brilliant, I love love love Steampunk, you don't need to twist my arm to go research more of those cakes/pictures, and now I absolutely have to make a steampunk cake.. Just when I thought I couldn't love CakeWrecks any stronger, you go on and do things like that...

Kit Watson said...

I'm being an airship pilot for halloween, and this post was very inspiring! Thank you so much for posting wonderful steampunky goodness.

Anonymous said...

OMG STEAMPUNK CAKES!!! This is just beyond awesome ^__^

Shell said...

Those were really cool.

Anonymous said...

I saw that third cake sometime ago on the internet. These are gorgeous cakes. Although the last one makes me snicker. A groom's cake, eh? With WHAT on top? Hmmm? HMMMMM??? *snicker*

Anonymous said...

This is so WEIRD!! I never post (although I am an avid follower) But I was going to forward the "gears" cake to you and here it is! LOVE Steampunk, and LOVE this blog!

Alice Ember said...

Right on time to celebrate the release of Scott Westerfeld's new book "Leviathan"! It's YA steampunk and it's awesome -- fabricated beasties! Flying whales! Clankers! Four-legged trucks!

Read it!

Anonymous said...

Well, I mainly detest steam punk (it's goth with clocks, aka anti-style, to me) but these cakes certainly exhibit a lot of skill.

Anonymous said...

Jen, I love you for bringing hard core geek-dom to a bigger audience. A Penny Arcade cake!! Eeeee!

Anonymous said...

ever made a kingcake?

Anonymous said...

Steampunk= Geeks trying once again to be hip. Trust me, I know, I am a geek myself (and no, I DON'T bite the heads of chickens, all you literalists)It's sad.

Think of Jules Verne and HG Wells, or netflix the movie "Steamboy" or other Miyazaki movies.

GOD, DO I KNOW THAT? I don't even like the genre...but the cakes are sure awesome.

Janella said...

Interesting style. I think it's amazing what talented decorators can do.

Anonymous said...

um, well i don't really see the "punk" part of this, but the are REALLY COOL!

Unknown said...

The one that looks like a copper cephalopod is actually the Nautilus, Captain Nemo's submarine, based on the version in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. My husband loves it.

Camille said...

I love love love the butterfly cake and the Penny Arcade one too. Is the PA cake anything specific from the games? My memory's drawing a blank. Makes me want to play the games again. I also saw on the flickr stream that there are fruit "lover" cakes too (I would use asterisks, but I'm not sure if you guys censor those). Groom's cake does look like a Dalek. P.S. Thanks for making the stop in Austin!

Anonymous said...

These are absolutely gorgeous. The one with the gears literally made me gape when I saw it. I can't imagine ths amount of time and work that went into that masterpiece.

The last cake with the phallic-shaped whistle on top made me LOL. XD

Jerri Glover said...

I am the proud bride associated with the last Groom's Cake you featured for this set. I was so pleased with how the cake turned out. I simply asked Bronwen for a steampunk themed cake and turned her loose. The cake was not only stunning it was delicious! We had spice cake for two layers and red velvet for one. Everyone raved over how good they were. This was a complete surprise and a gift from me for my Groom and I couldn't be happier with the results!

Kelly said...

These are gorgeous. And thanks for teaching me about Steampunk! I always enjoy Sunday Sweets, as a break from cracking up to just say "Ahhh!"

msyendor said...

Dang the last one looks like a Steampunk Dalek, which goes nicely with Doctors #1 and 2. Imagine a Dalek blowing "Exterminate!" out his whistle.

Anonymous said...

My son's friends & I keep telling him he's a total steampunk, but he claims to have no idea what steampunk is (baloney!). Personally, the more I look into it, the more I love it. Now it's in cake, too! Thank you for the link to "Steampunk Workshop". I found some awesome projects on there that I forwarded to himself as , uh, "gift ideas". And the cakes are gorgeous, too

Melissa (& Billy) said...

Wow, these are beautiful! I love all the faux-wood paneling details. When someone likes what they do, it shows.

And that copper squid reminds me of Captain Nemo from "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." I have a friend who would just fall over in a fangirlish froth if she got that cake.

Katy Hall said...

A consumable copper cake cephalopod? A.k.a. a cake clockwork octopus! Sweet!

Anonymous said...

I don't understand the attraction to retro industrial revolution cakes. I thought that era was over, and quite an ugly era at that, with child labor.
Though, if that is the only way copper and gold can be employed creatively in cake design, let them do it. It brings a sense of romance to that time in our history and celebrates machinery as what got us to this point.
Cakes can be a canvas for free speech just as anything else can.

Chelsie said...

Hello there, I am the bride from the wedding with the sixth cake down. It was a cheesecake and very tasty. My husband is an aerospace engineer and we both love steampunk! The whole wedding was themed. We commissioned the top statues made by a guy we found on Etsy called Builder's Studio and the cake was designed and made by The Cakery - which is located in San Luis Obispo, CA.

Thanks!

Chelsie

Kristina said...

As a steampunk enthusiast I gotta say I love the idea of gears I can eat. :p

Tinman_XL said...

Mental Note: Get a girlfriend. Propose to her. Spend next couple of years trying to talk her into a SteamPunk themed wedding :D

Ladies, I am available.

Mr. Natural said...

How very very cool is this stuff!! I do steampunk found object assemblage art. My lovely wife forwarded this steampunk cake post over to my computer for me, as I love cake AND steampunk. To me steampunk is sort of like art deco/art nuveau/science fiction/geek. For those unused to seeing steampunk, please DO google-snoop around to learn more, as there is a lot of truly weird and wonderful stuff out there to be found. How cool is it that one of the MAKERS of one of the cakes dropped in to leave a comment?

YUM-FUN!

JediFreeman said...

The Penny Arcade Cake was made as a gift and congratulations to the PA Team for successfully shipping their first game, On The Rainslick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One. (My wife @ Clever Cake Studio made it) :)

Sexy Sadie said...

To me, there's something not quite appetizing about metallic cake.

Lindsay said...

These cakes are amazing! I have never seen anything like them. WOW. They all look so real!

Goran said...

As a player of "steampunkish" campaign setting Eberron in D&D, I think these are absolutely awesome! I have to make sure I get one of these someday!

p.s. came here from the NY Times website when they did an article on you. Your site rocks. Salutations to the efforts of both you and all those hapless or ingenious bakers!

Anonymous said...

Here is my idea of the ultimate steampunk cake. One that is functional as in it cuts itself up and then serves out the pieces. Imagine that.

Yeah, some robotics in there too.

Suzanne Dargie said...

I know what steampunk is because I worked on the movie "9"...but before that, I have to admit I didn't know what it was either.
The last Groom Cake reminds me of a Dalek. Perhaps an early prototype?

Nicole Toro said...

Thanks for the link, these cakes are incr(edible)!

Robert Brown said...

Oh brilliant! I want the submarine in the shape of a giant squid cake.

Sarah said...

Was that last one supposed to be for the ladies or is my mind just in the gutter?

Anonymous said...

I really dislike steampunk, but no-one can deny how good these cakes are

Pam Walter said...

These are amazing and I am definitely going to explore steampunk on the internet. Thanks for the info. http://blog.sweetservices.com/sweetscandyblog/

Jenn Erickson said...

Yes, next stop: Steampunk. Loved these cakes. It's stuff like this that tempts me to get back into the biz. I love your blog. I look forward to following and living "vicariously" through the trials and tribulations of my fellow commradeds in the cake-o-sphere. Cheers!
Jenn @ rookno17.blogspot.com

Hellion of Troy said...

These are positively KILLER!!!! Two of my favorite things, steampunk and cake-making rolled into one, OMG I'm dying, I just love it. Now I have an extreme compulsion to go make one.

Nicole Toro said...

Sarah... That's a STEAM WHISTLE! Haha, but good catch.

LaRena Iocco said...

These cakes make me want to have a steampunk wedding if I ever get married....

Heather Massey said...

Sweet! Thanks for posting these.

Claw - kelsay photography | digital imaging said...

More Steampunk wedding pix, including a different take of the Mike's creation at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateandclaw/sets/72157622057285382/
Liz Spain and Austin Lamb Steampunk wedding August 08, 2009 on board the Virgina V, a 1922 Steamship plying the waters of Lake Washington and Lake Union in Seattle. The bride, PNW artist Liz Spain, designed and created her own wedding jewelery, dress and the most of the men's clothes and accessories. Visit the bride's steamy etsy site at http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=7382261

Elaine at Theatre 810 said...

is it bad that after all those teenage visions of pretty dresses and traditional themes, I've just changed my dream wedding in my head to a steampunk theme because of these cakes? Good thing my boyfriend is already a big steam fan (and that I happened to already be a fan of the Victorian era). :p

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, most people just think that steampunk means "spraypaint it copper and put some GEARS on it!"...leading to all sorts of hilarious awfulness.

These cakes are cool, despite being so silly-trendy.

Elaine at Theatre 810 said...

I don't mind "silly-trendy" if it's a silly trend I find awesome. :D

I haven't seen "wood graining" on a cake before... that may have won me over, as well. :D

AnnilyLF said...

Oh my god, I approve so much. I have been waiting for this day since I first discovered Cake Wrecks all these years ago. Thank you!

Anonymous said...

Food sculptures, that if you knew how much bacteria was adhered, you would not eat.
But what a joy for the eyes

TheyDHD said...

Must go make a steampunk cake now. *sigh* And here I had sworn off ever touching fondant. That'll teach me to swear things off, eh?

Danielle M said...

Now THEM I'd trust with a Dalek cake.

Tom said...

A+A+A+MA+A+A+ZING!

Term Paper said...

I only recently discovered Steampunk, but I love it. And wow. Those cakes are AMAZING. I'd have never thought of steampunk cake!

Max said...

i wonder who prepare such amazing cakes
i will take me years to even bake a simple cake..nice one..
A great Cooking job

Anonymous said...

These are absolutly incredible. I love them. Steampunk and Cakes - what a luschious combination. Yum Yum

tava tea said...

I only recently discovered Steampunk, but I love it. And wow. Those cakes are AMAZING. I'd have never thought of steampunk cake! I'm linking this post to a few friends who I know will appreciate it. :)