Hamish Blake has outdone himself this year.
For the past seven years, the comedian and podcast host has set out on making a cake for his kids, Sonny and Rudy on their birthday. And each year, he walks away in the end victorious.
This time around though, he almost admitted defeat… and more than once.
Watch: Hamish Blake and Zoë Foster-Blake on parenting and their relationship. Story continues below.
Because this year, for Sonny’s ninth birthday, he requested Blake’s most ambitious cake yet.
The world’s first solvable cake.
"This is my son's ninth birthday; he is very into Rubik's cubing at the moment, so he's requested a Rubik's cube cake," Blake said in a video posted to Instagram earlier this week.
"The kicker being, it moves... it moves just like a Rubik's Cube, like on all different axes. It's a solvable cake."
After some research, the comedian had faith he'd not only be able to pull it off but also get to bed at a reasonable hour (the last few years have shown him finishing at 2, sometimes 3am).
From the get-go, Blake acknowledged that in order to make a perfect Rubik's Cube cake, "not all" of the cake's components could be edible.
"It has cake components in it, but obviously, the bits that move have to be something else," he said.
"What are they? Well, I've learned a lot about 3D printing over the past week.
"After many trials... I'll put the full pre-production on [Instagram] Stories; I now have a whole bunch of bits that will hopefully slot together to make the inside of the Rubik's Cube, and the cake goes in that, we colour it up... it should be fine."
The first step was figuring out how tiny cube cakes could be made, decorated and iced within a timely manner in order to create the big cake.
Blake employed the help of his brother-in-law's 3D printer to help design a skeleton cube to build the cake around later.
After making a prototype and failing to get it working, they went to the Maker's Muse, Australia's most popular 3D printing YouTuber.
Then came the assembly time.
Once assembled (although still shaky), Blake had to fill all 26 cubes with marshmallow and rice bubbles.
He also addressed all the messages from viewers.
"I traditionally don't look at comments or DMs while this is going on, mostly because I can't... and I'm aware that there's not enough time even though we have all night," he said.
"It's usually people who make cakes all the time, heckling me and telling me what I've done wrong," he said.
He also admitted he'd listened to a few onlookers who advised him to use butter to get the 'batter' inside his cubes. He didn't account for the fact he needed to keep his plastic cubes sticky instead of greasy, however.
"That's a time bomb I've possibly made," he said. "Now I'm using a finger water bowl which is really helpful."
The difficulty of the challenge evolved to a "cake night first", telling viewers he was "so sticky" and "so dirty", that he had to change t-shirts.
"Fresh tee and we're off," he said. "Nothing's stopping cake night."
The comedian's wife, Zoë Foster Blake then appeared, who admitted she didn't have faith he could finish the cake at a reasonable time.
She was... right.
After that, Blake got help from Nedd Brockmann, the athlete who ran 4,000kn from Perth to Bondi back in October 2022.
He brought along some tools.
But he wasn't the only person Blake consulted for some help.
In fact, he went right to the expert: Scott Cam.
The famous tradie may be filming for The Block right now, but that doesn't mean he couldn't lend a helping hand.
To create perfect squares, he advised Blake to borrow his personal tool kit and grab his "very sharp, two-inch, carbonous chisel that you could [use] to shave down each piece."
After cleaning and boiling said chisel (?!) he got to carving.
And finally, the finish line was in sight. Or so we thought.
At 2am, it was time to assemble the cubes, but the comedian was worried about how the cake would move.
"The cube moving is a huge part of this [and it] gets a bit stiff so we need to lubricate it," he said.
"But of course, the lubricant needs to be food safe [and] not toxic."
To defeat this worry, he used... tiramisu flavoured lube.
Don't worry though, Blake was adamant none would get on the actual edible parts of the cake (just the plastic), and if it did, he was confident it would taste... edible.
Alas! The cake is now assembled, and it moves, exactly the way a Rubik's Cube does.
But it's not iced and... the marshmallow batter has begun to crumble.
"I know some people are hanging with me because it had that vibe like I was building to a surprise fast ending and I thought I was too," Blake told viewers.
"I am not. You may go to bed. I'm so sorry. This is not a fast ending."
By 3.47am, the cube cake was iced but the fondant still had to be applied. He had 64 squares to cut and apply.
Luckily for us, we didn't have to watch Blake struggle.
Instead, we got to see him apply the last two squares to his perfectly rotating Rubik's Cube cake.
"Is it clunky? Yeah. Yeah, it's really clunky. Is it lubed? Yes, it is. Does it solve? Well, I haven't done it yet," he said.
"Shattered. I'm shattered. The birds are chirping outside. I [think] I just heard my daughter's door open. It's about six in the morning.
"This one nearly beat me. Four hours ago, I thought I was nearly done. Two hours ago, I thought I couldn't get it done, and I was a broken man."
"But who cares? Let's cube baby," he added. "Happy birthday Sonny boy."
Happy ninth birthday indeed.
Feature Image: Instagram @hamishblakeshotz.
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