This is a cake I made last summer. It is a basic chocolate layer cake with chocolate ganache frosting.
For those of you who don’t know the story behind this cake, there was woman in her 80s, living in a small Spanish town who, a couple of years ago, decided that she could restore an old fresco painting that was painted originally by an artist in 1930 on a wall within her local church.
Nevermind that she was not experienced in restoring old paintings, she felt compelled to touch up the fresco, upset that parts of the painting had flaked off, due to the moisture on the walls of the church.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!
This news story caused a such a world wide sensation and quickly went viral, becoming a favorite meme from 2012.
On Halloween of that year, one of my coworkers made a costume of herself as the botched Jesus fresco, which I thought was so timely, so clever, so the following year for her birthday, I decided that I needed to make a cake of this meme. (Even though it was no longer timely, and by that time, no longer on people’s collective consciousness. Some people in the office didn’t get why I made such an odd-looking cake for a fellow coworker! LOL)
It’s my favorite meme. It has a happy ending too, because apparently, tourism is up in that small town, and the church is getting more donations from the public than ever.
It’s basically a chocolate cake with chocolate ganache. For the face area, I rolled out a thin layer of marzipan, then painted the face with a combination of chocolate ganache, food paint, coffee syrup, cocoa powder, and cinnamon mixed with some coffee liqueur.
Just wanted to share an old photo from before this blog. Have a good day/night!
DAVE BAKES
6 responses to “botched jesus fresco cake”
You’re cake is too funny! When I saw it I thought this looks familiar, and yes, your model is that blotched painting from the Spanish lady hahahahaha. Great job you did! Putting that into a cake, now that is artistry 🙂
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🙂 sometimes I think we need more people like her in the world, then I change my mind. What cajones!
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Oh I forgot to mention, this is an example of what we talked about earlier, about how everything has been done before. When I thought of making this cake, I searched online for “fresco Jesus cake”, and sure enough, somebody already made one!
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Oh my goodness! hahahaha
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OMG Dave! This is hilarious. I never heard of the botched painting…unimaginable! What a great story and your cake turned out perfect.
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Thanks! It was actually the most fun to make. I mean, I enjoy making cakes, but I was smiling the whole time. Such an amusing tale.
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