I spent five years on a submarine when I was in the Navy, and although the cooks were forced to work with extremely limited resources, the food was actually pretty good. If I had one gripe about the grub, it would be that we never had watermelon. Apparently, watermelons take up a lot of room, and that’s a precious commodity on a nuclear submarine. Whatever.
I do remember enjoying watermelon when we’d pull into foreign ports. One of those ports was the city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, home to “The House of Cakes Dubai,” which created the masterpiece shown above. That smooth icing stuff on the cake and on many other “fancy cakes” is called fondant. Fondant is a sugary, pie crust-like substance that’s laid over a regularly iced cake like a sheet. (When I helped my wife plan our wedding, I learned way more about cakes than I care to admit.)
The cake, which you can buy on the cakemaster’s website, carries a price tag of 600 dirhams, or roughly $160. That’s not too bad, considering you’d spend that much for breakfast at the Burj Khalifa.