Despite years of experience, I have never made a Noah’s Ark cake before. I’ve done other Biblical scenes – Creation, Garden of Eden, baby Moses’ trip down the river, the splitting of the Red Sea, etc. I’ve made many animal cakes – a circus, several dragons, a horse, a turtle. And then there are the ships – HMS Pinafore, a pirate ship, baby Moses again (OK, basket). Some of these were certainly very challenging to make, but they all fell safely within the realm of the possible.
This cake left them all behind.
It took a while to get into the swing of making the animals. I decided to start with the largest and work my way down. A debate ensued: what’s larger, a zebra or a camel? An orangutan or a cow? (I know what you’re thinking, there aren’t any orangutans or zebras on this cake. Well, no matter what I did, the first orangutan ended up looking like an ugly woman so I didn’t even bother making a second one. I’ll just set it aside and hope for a Godzilla cake order. And sadly the zebras missed the boat when I ran out of room on the deck.)
It may seem like a trivial amount of work to make an animal or two but when you have 14 species (2 of each – and no, I did not make 7 of each Kosher animal. The cows alone would have taken over the entire deck.) somehow it develops into an enormous project. 
I can be very lazy about some things; for example, you’ll never catch me at a gym. But I do not cut corners when it comes to sugar art. Those chickens were damn well going to have multi-coloured tail feathers and the raccoons wouldn’t have been complete without striped tails and tufted cheek fur.
Every Noah’s Ark cake I’ve ever seen is extremely juvenile. And without exception, they all feature elephants, giraffes and pigs, which is why you see none of those here. These cakes seem to be a popular choice for baby showers and first birthday parties (which is odd when you consider that the story is about the Apocalypse).
This cake was the centrepiece at a bar mitzvah party so I wanted the animals to be a little more sophisticated yet still friendly looking. However, Noah wasn’t going to be all smiles and good cheer. I mean the guy was 600 years old and is being pecked by a flamingo. I think the expression of anxiety and fatigue is just right.
The ark was made in two car-shaped cake pans and then turned upside down. I thought the slope of the windshield would be appropriate for the hull of a boat but in the end the shape was camouflaged by the water anyway and I could have just made it rectangular.
The cabin was built out of cookies cut to size, similar to the way you’d make a gingerbread house. I made it hollow to reduce the weight pressing down on the cake but also in order to be able to house the Dalmations that wouldn’t fit on the deck (you can catch a glimpse of them peeking through the window behind Noah’s shoulder).
When the flood ended God promised Noah that he would never visit such destruction upon the world again. I would like to vow never to undertake to make this particular cake again. (It would be safe to say that it rivaled a wedding cake in work hours.) But since I was careful not to seal the deal with a rainbow, I think it might be OK to go back on my word.
