Terrific Cakes: Deep Blue Birthday
Jump to the cake!
An Obvious Decision
It wasn’t that hard to decide which shark movie I was going to include in my Terrific Movies: Jaws. Obviously it had to be Jaws! Not only is Jaws one of the best horror movies ever made but it also revitalized and forever altered the course of what monster movies would be.
Jaws was and still is….
Hmm?
I didn’t do Jaws?
I did the VHS classic, the movie my sisters and I probably watched fifty times, the Alien meets Predator meets Cliffhanger actiony horror-ish top five shark movie Deep Blue Sea?
Yeah… that makes sense.
Oh… and then I was so angry and frustrated by the cake that I let it derail me for four months from making any posts? I was so angry at the video that I threw a tantrum and walked away?
Yeah… that makes even more sense.
Ope.
That is ABSOLUTELY terrifying to look at.
A Good “Bad” Movie
I’ve used Deep Blue Sea for years as an example of a good “bad” movie. I know it’s not great, and yet some magic of how it approaches its world, its budget, and the things it gets right elevates it above a “B” movie. But… just barely.
We all love Jaws. “We” here is society and criticism. To not appreciate Jaws is to be a contrarian. It may scare you, and you may never want to watch it again (something I like to call the Requiem for a Dream effect), but you’d be hard-pressed to argue it’s a bad movie.
Deep Blue Sea? I could hear the argument.
Is it a good movie? Um…..
Is it a bad movie? Double um….
I’d call it a big budget, or triple “A” movie that isn’t quite great, but is endlessly watchable. It has problems with character motivation, gratuitously prolonged death scenes, and a plot driven entirely by nonsensical 90’s-style science. Even a cursory scratch at Deep Blue Sea’s logic reveals a hollow, latex shell, but this movie also has incredible animatronics, compelling side characters, engaging action sequences, and an ability to constantly surprise the viewer with the ferocity and speed at which its characters are outsmarted by its monsters. Jaws it is not, but also Congo it is not (I really hope Laura Linney got a beach house out of that).
I’ll never forget the reaction of my family when Samuel L. Jackson gets killed in this movie. It’s a Drew Barrymore in Scream level turn that’s perfectly executed to shock the audience and rock us back on our heels. It’s an iconic moment in horror that’s perfectly situated in the story… and executed in some of the worst CGI ever to exist. AND YET: I absolutely forgive the bad effects because its impact in the narrative is so great. A+ effort and idea executed with a D+ touch.
I’ll also never forget hearing these LL Cool J lyrics as the movie ends:
Uh my hat is like a shark's fin
Deepest bluest my hat is like a shark's fin
Manmade terror
Hungry jaws of death
Y'all don't cross my depths
I'll pause your breaths
I cause you to sink down forty thousand leagues
Bleeding to death with no arms and short sleeves
My world's deep blue
Killers gotta eat too
Looking for human flesh to rip my teeth through
Just… wow. Starting your song with “my hat is like a shark’s fin.” It’s the chef’s kiss ending to this movie. That line is the first thing you hear as the credits roll.
By the way, this is one of TWO songs LL made for this movie.
That song is BAD.
It’s SOOOOOO BAD.
And yet how can you not love it? LL Cool J filmed an episode of Making the Video for this schlock. He is doing such a good job and cares so much about delivering his bad song for his bad movie. It all somehow comes back around to enjoyable, if not good.
A So-Bad-it’s-Good Movie
I would also be willing to hear the argument that Deep Blue Sea is not a B+ AAA movie, but rather falls into the even more elusive so-bad-it’s-good category.
Most movies in this genre are either cult classics, like Rocky Horror Picture Show, have artistic or cultural merit beyond their budget, like Pink Flamingos, or are so wholly committed to what they’re doing that the filmmakers sheer rapture elevates the work beyond its obvious shortcomings, like Grease 2.
This genre is highly contentious, and there are some people who refuse to admit movies that are this bad can actually come back around to good. The fun-killers need you to acknowledge that a movie you love is bad just because it’s poorly shot, has major narrative gaps, exposes the zippers on its monsters, etc. They can’t see past the shortcomings of the movie to the joy it brings, which in my mind elevates art beyond simple black-and-white terms like “good” or “bad.” I wholly believe these movies, when influenced by the perspective we bring to watching them, alchemically transform beyond the sum of their parts not only to good movies, but to great.
Loving a movie is like loving a person, a piece of clothing, a town, a color: your rose-tinted perspective shades your appreciation in a way that alters your reality. If you love a movie and think it’s great: it is. If you have watched a movie other people call a shameful sequel to one of the best movie musicals of all time so many times that you’ve memorized it, well the rest of the world can just ride their motorcycle into the great silver junkyard in the sky. (I understand my folly in making this argument with the worst song from Grease 2.)
A Birthay Cake for a Character Test Audiences HATE! HATE! HATED!
The ending of Deep Blue Sea always confused me quite a bit. It makes NO SENSE for Saffron Burrows to jump into the water at the end, and something about the shot almost looks like a mistake: why does she give the “cut” gesture right before she’s killed?
It was no surprise to learn that her character’s death was a reshoot. Turns out test audiences HATED her and considered her the villain of the movie. I kind of see that, but I think it’s naive not to think this hatred didn’t stem from her being an ambitious, smart, aggressive female character.
Alas, the well-meaning and unnecessarily offed Dr. Saffron Burrows gets chomped the morning after her shark-infested lagoon-adjacent birthday party, so I decided to make her a birthday cake!
Oh… dreams…
Deep Blue Birthday
Blue Birthday
This started with a simple enough idea: a blue funfetti cake.
Of all my go-to recipes, I still have yet to find a funfetti cake that I actually really love. The recipes are usually too dense (maybe to hold up the sprinkles) and produce thin layers that get dry pretty quickly.
Probably the best funfetti recipe is Christina Tosi’s Momofuku Birthday Cake, but it produces a spongy, thin layer designed to stack in a cake collar, which was not what I was looking for here. I tried Molly Yeh’s funfetti cake recipe from Molly on the Range, but I can’t say that I recommend it. It was about the same as the other funfetti recipes I’ve tried, which is to say insufficient to my memory of fluffy, sweet, barely vanilla mounds of cake bursting with melting pops of color.
I added 1/4 tsp of Blue Raspberry flavor to the cakes, which produced a perfect candy-coated flavor. I also added butterfly pea flower powder to give it a bright blue color. This was my first time using “blue matcha” and I was unaware of how intensely it dyes things. This three tier six inch cake was dyed with approximately 1/2 TBSP of powder and it turned my white cake into the deep blue color you see above. I think I could have used more like 1/2 tsp.
Overall the cake was a hit with the kids I gave it to, so I can admit it was a good cake… but I’m still hunting for that funfetti whale...
Maybe next time I’ll try doctoring up a Pillsbury cake mix….
White Chocolate Ganache
Since this cake was going to have artificial vanilla (a crucial choice for funfetti: don’t use real vanilla!) and a candy-flavored extract, I knew the frosting needed to be simple. I also planned to submerge the cake in gelatin, so the coating had to be watertight. These factors led to me using white chocolate ganache as a covering for the first time.
Honestly? This was great and easy to do. I understand why so many people use white chocolate ganache for wedding cakes or things that need to be more professionally finished. I definitely have a lot more to learn about getting it smooth, but even in this first trial I could see where my shortcomings were simply related to my inexperience. I can easily see how this could become a fool proof frosting.
The most surprising thing about this frosting was that it was surprisingly temperate in its flavor and richness! I worried that a ganache covering would be too intense, but it’s buttery, fatty flavor balanced out the sweetness of the cake really well.
Underwater Adventures
Now for the 40,000 gallon elephant in the room: gelatin submersion.
I’m here to say: I don’t understand how people are doing this.
I’ve watched so many YouTube videos, read so many blogs, and looked at so many examples of these island-style cakes, and I honestly don’t know what I’m doing differently than them.
I chill my cake. I mix up a super sturdy gelatin. I set the gelatin for more than 12 hours.
And every time I try one of these cakes some of the gelatin comes off on the acetate and the gelatin sloughs off when the cake is cut.
In theory, the waterproof nature of the white chocolate ganache is what’s causing the gelatin to slough off when cut, but why is this not the case for bakers I see doing this online? Are they preparing the acetate with oil to peel off easier? Are they roughing up the edge of the ganache to give the gelatin submersion more areas to grab onto the cake? Are they using a specific brand of acetate? Did they make a deal with a vaguely European woman to give them perfectly clear gelatin for ten years before they have to fake their own death and retire from instagram?
If they are/did, they’re not showing this step or writing about it. If you watched any of these subterranean cake tutorials online, you’d think it was the easiest thing to get these flawless results.
It’s very frustrating to get this wrong over and over and not have a sense of what’s going wrong. This attempt at an underwater submersion was probably the most successful, since the top layer of gelatin stayed firm on top of the cake for the four days that we ate the cake, but HOW does one get the sides to work?!
I am filled with rage.
Video Vixen
And now for the real 8,000 pound shark in the room: I fell off my consistency wagon again, and it was for such silly reasons. Mainly, that I was unhappy with the video and cake, so I just stuck my head in the sand. Boo.
I rushed this cake’s production because I wanted to have it done for an event, and in the process I produced pretty mangled video assets. The lighting was off. The sound was bad. But if I’m being really honest about the thing I was angriest about: I didn’t look very good. My body dysmorphia was rearing up quite badly this year post-cookie season (can I still say call April post-cookie season since I held onto all my Christmas weight until June?), so BOY oh BOY oh BOY was it a choice to record this video in a tank top with wet hair. It was thematic, but not conducive to nice thoughts.
Uff.
There’s an entire legion of men (and boys) filming themselves baking while either entirely shirtless or mostly shirtless (IYKYK). I see these people with tens of thousands of followers and wonder “why not?” I’m not so vain as to think that baking shirtless would suddenly gain me a few thousand followers, but… it wouldn’t not help. I honestly admire these men putting themselves out there and using their assets and asses to game the algorithm. It must be so freeing to put yourself out there and not suffer from cringe. In many ways, this Terrific Cakes project has been about putting myself out there in cringey, but enjoyable ways. I think one of the reasons I was so derailed was because this is the first time one of these videos really slammed me face first into my insecurities. The process of watching and editing myself has been, prior to this, quite cathartic and freeing. This one… well… broke me for four months.
And even further, the process of creating these videos, recipes, and images was compounding in frustration. I like the product, enjoy the creative practice, and love to see myself improve incrementally in my style and execution.
But OH MAN are the social media networks constantly reminding you of how unsuccessful you are. Likes. Shares. Comments. Notifications. Engagements. It’s like Instagram is designed to show you how much they are not helping you. A post may have engagement from 15 people… even though I have about 250 followers. Another post I spend no time on but uses trending audio could have 1000 engagements with no comments, likes, or shares, so it really means nothing. It’s a frustrating environment to create within, and I wish that just the practice was enough, but as any artist knows, part of putting your creativity into the world is having people engage with it.
Which is to say: I greatly appreciate every one of you that read this blog, and (don’t tell the videos) this is really my favorite format to express myself in.
I’m trying to concentrate on creating for its own sake. The frustrating, time-consuming, challenging, rewarding, joy-filled work should be all that really matters… because it’s actually the only thing I can control.
And yet… the sirens keep singing from Menlo Park, CA…
Recipe CARDS
I decided not to do recipe cards for this Terrific Cake. She’s not ready yet… let her cook.
ANXIETY RISING.
