Wonderful Town

Just because you’re celebrating your bat mitzvah in Jerusalem doesn’t mean that you can’t have a New York-themed cake. This cake was actually served to a very small group so a miniature dessert was requested. But how to include the bat mitzvah girl’s favourite Broadway shows and the essence of New York in just 8 inches? I wanted to cover everything that typifies New York – skyscrapers, the Statue of Liberty, Bloomingdales, Broadway show billboards, Tiffany’s iconic blue box, congested streets filled with buses and taxis, and most importantly, the guest of honour’s name in lights. You could hardly call the result understated.

The most difficult part was choosing which Broadway shows to highlight. Being a big musical theatre fan myself, I had to squelch my own inclinations towards the classic and try to imagine what shows a 12-year-old might love. Another consideration was that I was reproducing billboards in miniature. The image couldn’t be too complicated or the name too long to fit on a small square of fondant. These were definitely out:

Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Hairspray, The Lion King and Rent made the final cut – even though Cats required me to paint tiny dancers into the cat eyes of the poster and the Phantom title was way too long and ended up with a 3-D mask instead of a painted one.

Here’s a photo of the other side of the cake.