Photo by Michael Biven

First thanks to everyone who helped pull this off: Mom, Dad, Carrie, Lane, Kegan, Biddy, Tom, Charm City Cakes, the staff at Tsunami’s Baltimore and everyone who showed up. Without these people the event wouldn’t have happened, the cake would not have been made and I would have probably had a heart attack from stressing out trying to have everything work out. Thank you all big time!

UPDATE 7/15 Charm City Cakes emailed me today to say they are glad the cake was a hit and that it should appear in an episode in September.

A little over four months ago I started hatching a plan to surprise my brother Brian with a birthday party at Tsunami’s in Baltimore. The idea was to have some family and friends to come in from his home town of Louisville to surprise him with his friends in Maryland and a cake from Charm City Cakes. With Brian’s job and CCC both in Baltimore it seemed like the perfect over the top way to celebrate his birthday. The original idea for the cake was a simple round cake with some type of collage of little bits of his life; music (he plays in a couple of local bands), Tsunami’s (he manages and helped open the Baltimore location) and Star Wars (from his childhood). After talking with Mary Alice at CCC the idea of doing the Millennium Falcon was brought up and after thinking it over that is what we stuck with.

Brian tried very hard to wreck the plans twice. Originally he told me he was going to be working on his birthday which was going to make it hard to smuggle everyone into the restaurant plus the cake. Later I found out he had the day off and had a show scheduled with one of his bands, but with Carrie’s help we were able to get that show cancelled. Then he tells me he was thinking about leaving the restaurant and moving back to Louisville, I had to ask him to not rush into anything and at least wait till after his birthday since I had not seen the Baltimore location (there is a Tsunami’s in Annapolis as well). The last thing that complicated things was that Lane and I had to drive in that morning from Kentucky and the GPS unit was not set correctly for DST and was showing us an incorrect arrival time. It was our responsibility to get Brian there at 6 PM and CCC was scheduled to be there about 6:15. A few frantic phone calls later with Lane’s, Carrie’s and Mary Alice’s help everything was taken care of and we arrived with Brian a bit late surprising him with a group of close family and friends and a very kick ass cake!

Keep an eye out for the episode later this year on Ace of Cakes. I have a feeling that it will be the one were Duff is in Louisville delivering a cake to the Lebowski Fest. Brian was great on camera, but for myself I don’t think they ever had a person who will be blipped so much in what gets aired. I was a bit excited, relieved and that was the first and last surprise party I ever organize.

Added for those viewing this in a feed reader and not seeing the comments. As Lane pointed out the cake was chocolate cherry with the cockpit and several of the other details made out of a very dense rice krispie treat. There was a couple of wooden dow rods to keep two pieces of the cake attached and it was mounted on a pedestal to give the look it was in flight. We did start to wonder how we would cut the cake, but Lane had the great idea to grab a knife from one of the sushi chefs there and as soon as it was in Brian’s hands he had no problem dismantling the ship. Another comment or assumption made by people is that it would not taste as good as it looked, while fondate isn’t the best the cake and the rice krispie tasted great. I don’t remember seeing anyone without a smile eating the cake and even with the large amount of fondate there was plenty of cake to go around.

Thanks for the comments, it was a great addition to Brian’s surprise party and to a very long week. Lane and I drove from San Francisco, CA to Louisville, KY; got a few days break and then drove from Kentucky to Annapolis, MD to check into our hotel, grab Brian and rush out to the restaurant in Baltimore.