"This has not been a one-person job," said TODAY's Director of Culinary Production, Bianca Henry, about putting together the 6-tiered, 4-foot-high cake that greeted TODAY anchors past and present on the 60th anniversary show.
Bianca, the executive pastry chef for the project, was freed up by helpers Lish Steiling and Alli Simpson, who took on the show's regular food segments for two days so Bianca could get started.
Each tier of this enormous dessert is a different flavor (Bianca picked her 6 favorite): chocolate, vanilla, Creamsicle, almond mocha, carrot and lemon raspberry. Around 60 pounds of butter, 50 pounds of flour, 70 pounds of sugar, 11 pounds of chocolate and 8 quarts of cream went into it.
She started brainstorming the design two weeks ago and found aesthetic inspiration from TODAY's original 1952 logo.
"At first we weren't sure if we'd do the cake in-house" or hire an outside company, said Bianca. In true form, TODAY's hard-working food maven decided to do it from start to finish.
When TODAY.com caught up with these queens of batter and baking, they were in the midst of applying the fondant (a sugar paste) and diamond sparkle powder to the bottom tier. It was clear they made the right choice to do it themselves: Bianca, a trained pastry chef, was in her element and the cake was shaping up to be a big success.
