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I signed us up to participate in this year’s Global Hackerspace Cupcake Challenge.  If you’re asking yourself what is the Global Hackerspace Cupcake Challenge you can find the answer here: http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Global_Hackerspace_Cupcake_Challenge_2012

If you don’t feel like visiting that page and reading all about it, all the hackerspaces in the world that want to participate have to build something that will keep a cupcake safe in the mail.  Each hackerspace picked another space to send their cupcakes.  Each space that receives a cupcake must make a video recording of opening the box and judging it based on things like: did the cupcake survive, creativity of the contraption that protected the cupcake, taste, and packaging decoration.  This very blog post even gets us an extra 3 points!  Here are some pictures of the contraption I built.  It fit exactly within the 12″ box limits and the whole thing weighed less than the maximum 2 kg at 1.52 kg.  I can’t wait to see what Alpha One Labs ends up with when they open ours!

 

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One of the challenges of the cupcake was that it had to be done over the Synchronized Hackathon, what usually starts Friday night.   This however doesn’t mean you have to wait until then to start thinking about the cupcake.  Though for us, this is exactly what happen.  I casually asked Alice how much she would charge me to cook some cupcakes.  She then got excited and spend the rest of the evening baking and all day Saturday making the cupcake.

Our cupcake wasn’t a standard cupcake.  The idea was mentioned to put a cupcake inside a cupcake. Which in itself is awesome, but not as awesome as a cupcake inside a cupcake inside a cupcake.

To pull off something so awesome we needed to make one big cupcake.  To do this we bought some disposable circular roasting pans, and individual pie pans.  Alice then shaped them into a more cupcake looking pan.

In the end we had two giant cupcakes, a few smaller ones, and a few even smaller ones.  Alice stayed up all night Friday finishing the baking.

Saturday the construction began.  Alice magically turned one giant cake looking thing into a cupcake with two cupcakes inside it.  She also took time out to run to the store where she was able to talk to a baker and get some Italian Buttercream frosting.  This frosting is apparently special and cost her a bit, but was worth it.

So after many long hours of baking and construction here is what the cupcake should look like inside.

And here is the final cupcake.

Here it is boxed up and ready to go.  The cupcake is frosted to the bottom of the pan.  Then four pieces of cardboard are around the outside of the cupcake.  We then ran bamboo skewers through the cardboard, pan and cupcake.  This was to hold the cupcake down if it got tipped upside down.  Also we added bread to suck up the moisture and keep the cupcake fresh.

Here are more pictures if you would like to see them.

UPDATE: So it looks like someone can’t send a package through the mail.  This morning I went down to the post office and found our cupcake had been sent back.  🙁  As sad as I was about it, I was kind of excited to see how the cupcake looked after a week and a half in the mail.  This evening Alice and I opened it.  Here are the results.

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As you know we competed in the Global Hackerspace Cupcake Challenge recently. Last Friday we received the cupcake from Santa Barbara Hackerspace. Here is the video and some pictures taken during the unboxing. Hope you enjoy!

SBHX's wonderful suspension system