Big cake for Jim Giles' anniversary

News on 6 Meteorologist Jim Giles has been at the News on 6 for 25 years, so we're throwing a big party to celebrate. It'll be kind of an educational celebration. It's Jim's Wild Wild

Wednesday, April 12th 2006, 10:34 am

By: News On 6

News on 6 Meteorologist Jim Giles has been at the News on 6 for 25 years, so we're throwing a big party to celebrate. It'll be kind of an educational celebration. It's Jim's Wild Wild Weather Show and anniversary party all in one.

Merritt's Bakery is helping with an essential element of the party. News on 6 reporter Rick Wells to Merritt's for a story he described as a piece of cake.

"We gonna use pieces of this to stack up on here." Bobby Merritt is working on the big event cake. It's like a big piece of edible sculpture. "Since it's on the Wild Weather Show we thought you needed a tornado."

So that's what she's doing, sculpting a tornado out of cake and icing on the side of this three tiered cake. It'll be heavy, maybe 60 pounds. "It'll take two men to carry it in." Carry it, what if God forbid. "In 26 years we have never dropped a cake."

This will be the celebration center piece, they are making it tall so it can be seen from the stage, they've sprayed it dark and gray like a storm. There'll be the tornado and lightning too. After every storm there's sunshine and this cake will have that too.

If the sun looks golden, well it is. The yellow icing is being sprayed with a mixture of 24 karet gold powder and alcohol, the alcohol evaporates leaving a golden glow.

That one cake is not nearly enough. It'll take hundreds of pounds of cake to feed the fans. Merritt's is baking lots of extra cake, 35 or so sheet cakes.

In fact, if you're interested, it will take 325 pounds of sugar, 80 pounds of oil, 140 pounds of cake flour and 85 dozen eggs. Bake for 40 minutes at 360 degrees will make about 600 pounds of cake.

Severe weather never looked so delicious.

You can have some cake as the News on 6 celebrates Thursday evening at the Wild Wild Weather show at the Tulsa Pavilion at the Tulsa County Fairgrounds.

The show starts at 7 PM, but be there for the Mad Science pre-show at 6:30 PM. The first 1,000 people through the front doors also get a free t-shirt!