I am meeting with a lady tomorrow who would like an idea and a price on a cake for her anniversary. She wants it to be themed on the New York City Marathon. I don't run, have never been to New York, and have limited abilities to create decorations from gumpaste. She would like a re-creation of the course including the five bouroughs (sorry if I butcher the spelling).

I am hoping some of the decorators from New York will give me some ideas or anyone who has thoughts on a marathon cake.

I have no experience with gum paste, moderate experience with fondant, and I am pretty good with buttercreams, royal, etc.

I can also order things from a local specialty supply store, so that might be handy!

Here is a link to the course map.

http://www.ingnycmarathon.org/about/coursemap.pdf

I would be most appreciative of any help. If there are cakes that I might draw ideas from that would be great. I did a search but can't find anything!

Just by looking at the picture, that cake is going to be huge!!! I have never been to NY so I can't really advize you on that, but I think if you did a color flow picture or even a buttercream transfer of a crowed running down the street might work. Then put some race related decorations on the sides of the cake.

Did you happen to catch the FN Challenge episode with the rice crispy treats. The Blond with the spiky hair had a good NY scene.

Good luck with that.

Could you make a picture of the map and then add a runner or a pair of sneakers?

You could do a cake like this one on this link. The road wraps around the cake and you could have a little theme/history from each borogh they run through in New York and the top be the finish line. If you can't get the link
let me know
Road of Life by rstml
http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=94878

That cake is fabulous. Thanks for the ideas. I had 3 tiers in mind or a HUGE sheet cake! Color Flow is a great suggestion. Does anyone else have any ideas?

I will post what I come up with! Thanks so much for your help!

Wow! This is a tough one! I lived in NY for 22 years and there's too many "things" that come to mind when I think about NY I just went to the NYC site to get ideas --like a logo or something- I wasn't very inspired by anything...like sujeeart said, some sneakers or maybe a medal--you could use the ribbon part of the medal to wrap around the cake,....unless you could just do a replica of the route on a sheet cake with BC......I'll keep thinkin'...

How about doing edible images around each tier? If you are doing 3 tiers, devote half of each to a different burough with the top tier having a burrough and maybe a finish flag and a replica of the medal.

Also, can you tell where the different mile markers are? I completed the Disney marathon in 2006 and each mile had a big sign marking it. So if you have images of different places in each burrough... with the mile marker that the place would be at. I wouldn't put all 26 markers... but several of them... in order that they would be passed.

Hope that makes sense.

I am going to have to look into getting edible images. I don't have the printer equipment for it. I know that some of the bakeries can be funny about copyrights. Those are good ideas though and I could incorporate it with the others nicely.