With her quips and sly one-liners, Maggie Smith's Dowager Countess often takes the cake on Masterpiece's "Downton Abbey." But at the recent season five premiere of the popular PBS series (which returned to the air Sunday) in Atlanta, hosted by Georgia Public Broadcasting, she actually was the cake.
Local cake and chocolate artist Karen Portaleo spent 18 hours reproducing the Countess' bust in vanilla cake and buttercream "with an Earl Grey Tea soak," she noted on her website.
GPB's Victoria Bostic made a video of the making of the Countess cake, cleverly splicing in comments from the series to make it seem as if the characters are commenting on the confection.
The 50-year-old Portaleo has been baking for nine years and told TODAY.com that she was originally asked to recreate Highclere Castle, the building that stands in for the Abbey on the show. But she asked for another option.
"Buildings are my Kryptonite," she said. "To me, buildings are much harder than faces; buildings are nothing but mass. Faces and people are so much more interesting."
And so, it was the Dowager Countess instead.
So far, she hasn't heard back from Smith about the rendering, but the show's consultant, Alastair Bruce, was on hand for the premiere and sent the actress a photo. "He said the cake is so very American, which I thought was hysterical," said Portaleo. "It is very American to create a human out of cake."
Be sure to watch the video, and goggle at the finished product before ... and after!
"The Countess was delicious," quipped Portaleo on Instagram.