Sometimes my woodworking and culinary sides "clash"

So, I have mentioned a few times in passing that I also have a culinary background as well as having been a woodworker for a very very long time. A few years ago, while working in a fine dining restaurant as a sous chef, I decided I wanted to also know how to decorate cakes, figuring it would be a nice thing to have on my side, should I ever decide to get more into that side of cooking/baking. The class itself was fun, but as the only guy in the class, I made a few women mad by, as one put it, “moving in on a woman’s territory. The instructor was especially mad when I decided NOT to buy a cake turntable from her shop, and the next week, showed up with this “masterpiece”. Hey, I saved over $50 by using scraps in my wood shop. Plus the cake turntables she sold were made of cheap plastic. There was NO WAY I was going to spend $50+ on plastic. Now that I think about it, I saved even more, because I made the top “universal” so it could accept different sized tops for different sized cakes.

Here are a few additional pics. The round top is great for standard 9” cakes, but also works for up to 12” rounds, if needed. The rectangular top is mostly for 13” x 9” “sheet” cakes. The tops both fit on pretty tight, so there’s NO worry about movements at the wrong time, while icing or decorating a cake.

Scraps used were 3/4” soft maple, 3/4” red oak, 1/4” luan (for the tops) and a few small pieces of cheap 3/4” pine. I really didn’t want to cut down any large pieces if I didn’t have to. Also, a 6” lazy susan for something like $2.49, I believe. Throw in a few screws and some wood glue and there you have it. There’s no need for a finish of any kind, as the tops are covered with aluminum foil (a few layers).

-- Respect your shop tools and they will respect you - Ric