Oreo 100th Birthday Cake

It’s not everyday that I have the chance to make a cake for a 100th birthday. And this was not for just any birthday, but for the 100th birthday of the Oreo cookie!

I am honoured to have been chosen as one of the three bakers in Canada to create a special birthday cake for Oreo. This was one of the cakes, along with a number of events across Canada and the world, which helped kick off a year-long celebration of the 100th birthday celebration of the Oreo cookie. This cake was unveiled on March 6th, marking the day that the first Oreo was ever sold in 1912 in Hoboken, New Jersey.

This cake is not just about a cookie, but the millions of people all over the world that have enjoyed and supported Oreo. If you’ve ever had an Oreo, I believe that this cake is also about you.

As I was thinking of the cake design, and thinking about Oreo, I began to realize that one of the special characteristics of this cookie is that it is an animated cookie, meant to twist apart and share with others.

To me, this is a cookie that is about friendship. I really wanted to relay this in the design of the cake, to make it about Milk and Oreo’s lasting friendship, spanning the course of a hundred years.

Milk and Oreo were carefully hand-sculpted and brought to life:

In creating this cake, I grew to really admire many aspects of the cookie. I won’t lie, there were several Oreo cookies consumed in this creative process – I enjoyed the intense dark chocolate flavour combined contrasted with the creamy vanilla filling. I kept thinking – someone, or many people, at some time, decided to create this cookie to share with others around the world.

Here the cake is filled with crushed Oreo cookies and chocolate ganache:

In the design on the biscuits, I noticed that the 12 flowers are formed from triangles, and dots and lines and evenly placed as a pattern… while the mini Oreos have fewer flowers because of the smaller size. We recreated the mini Oreos out of fondant by making a mold from an actual real cookie.

In the packaging, I noticed the choice of royal blue, baby blue, and the hint of red, contrasted with white, and also the gold. pink, and confetti in the packaging of the limited birthday edition Oreo cookies. The gold was tied into the number 100s on the giftbox, and in the gold stripe of the candle. Pink was used in the smaller details, such as the miniature gifts. Our confetti was made of gumpaste, which was rolled thin, then cut into squares.

The cake was assembled in the last 24 hours before it was due. I am still in awe of it’s presence, and find it very surreal to have the idea come to life.

After the cake’s tour, the cake was displayed at SAIT Polytechnic, in the window of the Market Place, in the John Ware building.

After the cake was set up, people would walk by and stop and take a moment – slowly their eyes would move up, and they would see Oreo and Milk splashing out of the cake, and then they would smile.

And in their moment of happiness, I found my own.

Happy Birthday Oreo! May the next 100 years be just as amazing!

• See more photos of the making of this cake on my Facebook page
• Join the birthday celebration at Oreo100.ca
• Try Oreo birthday recipes on Kraftcanada.com
• See all three of Canada’s cake creations on the Oreo Facebook page