Record Player Cake

I recently made this cake for my father who celebrated his 72th birthday. This design is from the book called Planet Cake.

During my father's era; in the 1960s and 1970s, a record player was the only gadget used to churn out music other telecast from radios. I can still remember the record player that my father had. It looks like a brief case that can be detached into 2 halves. One half is the turntable and the other half is a speaker. To churn out music, a record (know as LP for larger record and EP for smaller record) was placed on the turntable and a stylus with a needle at one end bearing a tip made of diamond was manually placed on the spinning record. Special care must be taken when placing the stylus on the spinning record as any scratches with damage the record.

I can still remembered those nights when my father used to sit in the dark enjoying his music. I often wonder why my father listens to music in the dark. It was only much later that I realised when you utilised all 5 senses the quality of the message received will be compromised as each senses will give you a different perception. However, if you were to only focus on a single sense at a time, the quality of message received is much more intense.

I can see that my father was very pleased with his cake though he isn't one who freely express his feelings. However, my nieces and nephews were at loss as to what gadget is this. Can't blame them as they were all from the era of CDs, MP3 and iPods.

Coming back to the making of the cake; the biggest challenge was to mould the stylus. Initially, I tried by covering a flat piece of fondant over a wooden chopstick. But the stylus looks bulky and clumsy sitting on the record. Eventually, I decided to use a same wooden chopstick but this time I only covered the both ends with fondant. And with that it looks a lot better.