Can you ride a skateboard?  I’ll admit that I haven’t tried one since my son was about 9 and that was a lifetime ago.  He’d had his skateboard about a month and loved it.  He was always on it and one day he said, “Hey Mom, why don’t you give it a try?”

This was in the dark ages before kids wore helmets and neither did their mothers.  I was game to give it a try and in less than a 10th of a second, I went ass over teacups and landed flat on my back – on the concrete.  That was the first AND the last time I went on a skateboard.  I went inside and made a cake.

The other day, I was invited to make a skateboard cake for Penny Skateboards, the popular Australian skateboard company started by Ben Mackay.  Ben started skateboarding when he was only five years old and grew up to own his own company. He’s been making Penny Skateboards for the past 12 years.

You haven’t seen too many cakes on Orgasmic Chef and that’s because we don’t eat a lot of cake in our family.  When I was asked to make a red and white polka-dot skateboard cake I took a deep breath and said, “Sure, I can make a cake like this.”  I’ve never done a designer or specialty cake, not even for a birthday but  I’m always up for a challenge.

I went about gathering up all the ingredients – and there are a few.  This cake making business is not for the faint hearted.  By the time I’d bought the red and the white fondant, the ingredients for the buttercream icing underneath, all the bits for the rice krispie treats and the cake ingredients, I was hauling a big bag into the house.  All I could think of was, if this doesn’t work, I’m going to be really angry with myself.

I began by making the cake and I used a round pan and a square pan.  When it was cool, I cut the round cake in half and used one for the front end and one for the back end then shaped the cake into a skateboard contour.  I could have made the back end a bit smaller but it looked right at the time.  Not so much now.

Once the cake was in the oven, I started on the rice krispie treats for the wheels and trucks.  Marshmallows in Australia come in pink and white, in the same bag.  I was going to cover them up, so pink wheels didn’t matter.  Have you ever used rice krispie treats for shapes?  I hadn’t.

This stuff is sticky – really sticky.  I used my rice cooker measuring cup to start the wheel shapes and once I had that, I used a round cookie cutter to finish them off.  I made long rolls and stuck a skewer through the middle to stab the wheels for the axles.

Then I left everything to harden and went to visit my mother-in-law who was really ill and lying in bed when we got there.  No sooner than we arrived and said we’d come to take her out, there was a miraculous cure.  She went from not being able to eat a bite to two cups of coffee and two sweet treats.

When we got back I made buttercream icing and covered the cake and then began rolling the fondant.  I’d never done this before other than in a class.  I was dreading this but once I got the hang of it, it wasn’t too bad.  The cake was covered and looked good.

Polka-dots.  Yes, the underside of the plastic Penny Skateboard is covered with polka-dots and so is my cake.  I rolled fondant and cut out a bazillion of those little things and plopped them on the cake, then smoothed them down by putting some baking paper on the cake and rubbing it with my hands.  I would have used that cake smoother thing but I couldn’t find it.

I was so relieved to have the cake part done but I knew the tough part would be getting fondant on the wheels, the axles covered in silver and getting them on the cake.  At one point I had more icing on me than on the wheel but after the first one I knew I had it licked.  Not literally, I didn’t even lick the bowl.

Once I had the wheels on the cake, I called John and said, “Does this look like a skateboard?”

He said yes.  If it had looked like a dog’s breakfast he would have said it looked like a skateboard because he’s a smart man.

If you want to make a skateboard cake, it’s really not that difficult but if you’re new at making specialty cakes, figure in a fair chunk of time so you can take it slow.

I haven’t had this much fun in the kitchen for a long time.  Thanks to Penny Skateboards for sponsoring this post.