You really have to see Bryant-Denny Stadium with your own eyes to admire its beauty, the stadium itself or the incredible groom’s cake an Alabaster bakery sculpted for recent Alabama wedding.
The sugar artists at Barb’s Cakes crafted a red velvet masterpiece the real structure’s architects would admire, down to the jumbotrons and all.
Barb Sullivan, who owns the licensed commercial kitchen that specialize in wedding and large event cakes (now for three decades), books appointments up to eight months in advance, sometimes even a year. “Once we get an order like that, we have plenty of time for engineering, figuring out supports and dimensions so everything fits together, Sullivan said about the Bryant-Denny Stadium groom’s cake they made for a reception in Alabama.
And yes, you read that right. This and other cakes with such intricate designs require first-class “engineering.” Sullivan and her team’s designs run the gamut: Golf bags, mallard ducks, Braves jerseys, cigar boxes, French horns, Auburn helmets, footballs and, in this case, an incredible Bryant-Denny Stadium.
It has the exterior and interior of the stadium with painted football field, the Walk of Champions entrance, ramps, championship flags, field goal posts, stadium lights, trees and four jumbotron screens with a photo slideshow of the bride and groom.
This was a sophomore effort, too, after having baked a stadium cake for a Birmingham country club a few years ago. The first go-around gave them even more confidence to pull it off this time.
“You’ve got to start figuring out how much cake, cake batter, how many sheet cakes you need for proportion,” Sullivan said. “When you have the jumbotrons, you want to make sure they’re visible, not too small. A lot of engineering behind it. You’ve got find a pattern you’re going to go by. There’s a lot of math involved. I never dreamed that I needed to be a math major and an engineer along with culinary experience when it comes to sculpting cakes like this. It’s pretty crazy.”
The cake board was 4-feet-by-3.5-feet, while the the actual cake measured around 3.5-feet-by-3.75-feet. It required 12 half-sheet cakes, 15 pounds of buttercream and approximately 20 pounds of fondant. Sullivan said the cake itself was about 90 percent edible and could feed 275 people.
“It is a lot larger than usual. It is extremely large for a groom’s cake,” Sullivan said about the stadium cake.
Helping Sullivan make the cake was what she proudly calls her “Team Buttercream,” consisting of Alicia Crepps (her lead assistant), Mya Douglas, Carrie Worthy, Mary Grace Davis and her husband and manager Cliff Sullivan. She said, all told, it took about 130 man-hours to complete.
The price if you want to book a stadium cake like this one? Sullivan said it currently starts at $4,500.
She said it can also be tricky to ensure every aspect of such a structurally complex design is food-safe, especially when you’re trying to build an upper deck, stadium lights and jumbotrons. “These are all items, too, that need to be food-grade and food-safe when you’re putting them into cake,” she said. “It’s just a step-by-step process figuring out what to do.”
It helps that Sullivan is a huge Alabama fan, so getting this right was extra important. “I was very passionate about making sure the main details were correct in this,” she said. “We were very, very concerned about getting the scales right. When they asked for this cake, they may not have even needed cake to feed 275. This feeds about 275 people. Because the cake has to be made that size, they go ahead and order it because of presentation.”
It paid off, too. Sullivan said the bride and groom were amazed. Family members and wedding vendors were taking selfies before they even put on the finishing touches. They’ve since gotten lots of shares and comments on Facebook and Instagram.
“It’s challenging, but it’s also rewarding when you finish a project like that,” Sullivan said. “When everything that’s in your mind actually comes out the way you wanted it to come out, that’s very fulfilling.”
Cakes like this aren’t just cakes. They are edible sculptures, and the craftspeople take their work very seriously.
“It is sugar art,” Sullivan said. “We do consider ourselves sugar artists. When you get this involved with cake decorating, you’re not just a baker. You’re a sugar artist. When you’re working with sugar art, this is not something you can work on for weeks. If you’re making a model of Bryant-Denny Stadium out of Legos, you can work on that for weeks. With cake, you cannot. I’m known for very moist cake and am passionate about that. The cake is baked the week of. You have three days to put together the main structure of a cake like that in order for it to be moist and edible.”
Complicating things further is their art is ripped apart almost as soon as anyone lays eyes on it. After all, it is a cake. They made it for people to cut it up and eat it. Then it’s gone. All that work. Booked nearly a year in advance. The engineering, the baking, the scaling, the decorating. Poof.
“After we set up, it’s so hard to leave your sculpture. I’m not there when they demolish it,” Sullivan said. “I tell them how they can cut into it and tear it down to serve, but I’m not there, which is kind of a good thing. It is hard to leave. That’s where my girls come in. They say ‘Ms. Barb, OK, we’re done. It’s time to go.’ I don’t stay to see them cut. That’s hard.”
Football cake orders come often, and not just in-state. Sullivan said they did a 4-foot replica of Bevo XV, the current Texas Longhorn mascot, about four months ago. “We live and sleep whatever this structure was for two weeks,” she said. “I can tell you where every spot on Bevo the bull is. We did get to see that groom walk in. That was amazing, too., for a groom to walk in and say, ‘Oh my gosh, you got every detail correct down to every spot on Bevo.”
As for stadiums, when asked if she’d take an order for Jordan-Hare Stadium (which someone did request in her Facebook comments), Sullivan said sure, but with a caveat for other programs outside of Alabama.
“We would make it, and I wouldn’t charge more for that stadium,” she joked. “But LSU, Clemson, Ohio, all those -- we’d probably have to charge more for that.”
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This huge Bryant-Denny Stadium cake is almost too perfect to eat - AL.com
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