The assignment for this cake was for one of the boys to be dunking the ball into the basket. In other words, feet off the ground, perhaps with the player hanging onto the basket’s rim, ball on its way through the net. The other boy looks on in defeated amazement.

Hmh.

I try never to say no to any request. For one thing, you always want to make the customer happy and eager to order many more cakes in the future. For another, a challenge is always welcome, even preferred to something humdrum and conventional.

In this case I wasn’t too worried about the first issue, as the customer was my 10-year-old nephew. I’m pretty confident he’ll be placing another order next year, particularly since his mother very much enjoys our birthday arrangement.

It was really the second issue that concerned me. Here was the problem. Gravity. Now, I have defeated gravity pretty easily in the past.

In that case, though, it’s no secret that there were wooden rods stuck into the M & Ms packet and Coke can which were camouflaged by the cascading candy and faux cola (well it’s no secret anymore, although this information is readily available just about anywhere online).

But here, the opposite effect was called for. He wasn’t falling down, like the candy, he was meant to be jumping up. How do you do that without using unsightly wires or sticks which would obviously ruin the illusion?

I could theoretically have had him hanging onto the rim. But even though he wasn’t large, he did have weight. How would a basket made of sugar not collapse if required to support him? And even if it did survive, the pole holding the whole thing together would inevitably start bending from the weight and that would be the end of that game.

I most definitely gave this way more thought than my nephew, who turned out to be delighted by the cake and its earth-bound players.

And clearly the boy with the ball was going to make that shot anyway. It’s much more of a challenge when you’re standing on the floor.