I love new challenges. Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself. But then I actually found myself pacing around the kitchen muttering “I can, I can, I can.” No wimpy “I think I cans” here. And I did! Well, at least that’s how the story ended.

Here’s how it started. These are some pictures of what I was supposed to be recreating.

I’m not sure why the customer wanted an edible copy of a stuffed animal, and it didn’t actually occur to me to ask. It’s not even close to the strangest order I’ve received.

I figured the best way to go about it was to bake a cake in a teddy bear-shaped pan, adjust the limbs a bit, add on a longer snout, ears, and antlers and voila! And it all was going swimmingly. I used spare offcuts of cake to build up the necessary parts, covered it in icing, and laid it aside to set. An hour later it had collapsed all over the counter.

It was 10 pm, the night before it was due.

No time for tears or panic, I sprang into action. This time, I dispensed with the creative thinking, and baked three small round cakes. I stacked them and carved out a teardrop shape. I salvaged the legs from the first attempt; the ears and antlers – made out of cookie – were also transferrable. The problem, I realized, had been the extra heavy head, a complication I had foreseen and then breezily chosen to ignore. The second time around I whipped up some much lighter RKT (Rice Krispies treats) and shaped it into a skull. After that, it was a snap.

I was a bit concerned that there might not be enough cake, even though the customer hadn’t specified the number of people the moose was supposed to feed. So just to make sure, I decided to seat the little guy on a cake tree stump. I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense – what moose is smaller than the diameter of a tree? – but I threw logic to the wind.

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