The Icing on Peary's Cake
news@TimesRecord.Com
04/07/2009
By Rachel Ganong, Times Record Staff
BRUNSWICK — Adm. Robert E. Peary never looked so good. One hundred years to the day after he reported reaching the North Pole, Peary's image adorned an arctic tableau made of cake in Bowdoin College's Hubbard Hall on Monday.Bowdoin officials, as part of marking Peary's achievement at Bowdoin's Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum, ordered the cake from catering and event planning company Belle Fete, located at 35 Noble St. "We needed a centerpiece, something special," said Bowdoin Administrative Assistant Kristie Clifford.What they got was an entirely edible concoction depicting Peary's historic, if contested, arrival at the North Pole. On a tundra of icing, Peary, Inuit guides, their sled dogs, shovels and pick axes huddle near a fire and igloo on a snowy backdrop.To produce the edible tribute to Peary, Belle Fete partners Lori Kinkade and Audrey Schoenthaler summoned their most ambitious baking efforts to date.
Kinkade, who started Belle Fete two years ago after moving from Boston to Maine, combined 40 eggs, eight pounds of butter, 10 pounds of sugar, 10 pounds of flour and six hours of work to create the chocolate buttercream cake. Then, Schoenthaler, who studied sculpture at the University of Maine Farmington, sculpted play-dough-like fondant into figurines, sometimes shaping it around rice crispy treats to form larger elements like the igloo. She painted each of the figurines, mixing her food coloring with vodka to avoid dissolving their sugary coating.
All told, Schoenthaler's finished product represented 16 hours of work."This has been the most detailed one," she said, comparing the cake to others the pair has made. As students, professors and Peary-philes filtered through Hubbard Hall, they ate through two sheet cakes while admiring the finished work. Like his arctic expedition, however, Peary's cake withstood its environment."It's too beautiful to eat," Clifford said.
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