A Towering Challenge

Happy Birthday to The Times of Israel, an online newspaper that recently celebrated its second birthday. This year saw the launch of a French and an Arabic site, hence the presence on the cake of the Eiffel Tower and the Dome of the Rock, in addition to Tel Aviv’s Azrieli Towers.

Making the Eiffel Tower posed quite a challenge. The four sides of the tower incline inwards. If you make each side separately and allow to dry, they won’t fit together properly. If you try attaching them while they’re still soft, they’ll become distorted or collapse. The only solution was to make each side in four sections. When they had hardened I attached the four legs to each other, making sure that they angled slightly inward. When that had dried, I added the next layer in four parts, angling slightly more but making sure the inside remained hollow. And so on, until at the top, all the parts met to form one solid piece. The lattice work was piped on and painted silver afterwards.

This is pretty much the method used to build the tower in the first place.

Happily, I was not required to include restaurants on the first and second visitor levels. Anyone hungry enough would have to resort to munching on the top tier itself.