Baker Gary Gulino adds details to his culinary recreation of Old Campus.

The sweet and savory tale of a 300-pound cake

After Yale baker Gary Gulino's weeks of meticulous planning, he dreaded the chance that the University's 300-pound, eight-layer birthday cake would look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa -- rather than Old Campus. But, without a single glitch, the massive cake was transported in four segments from the Bake Shop in Commons and assembled into one grand piece on Hewitt Quadrangle, where thousands of birthday guests gathered to glimpse, photograph, and taste the confectionery creation, one of the highlights of Yale's Tercentennial Open House on Oct. 21. Gulino, whom coworkers call "the cake guy" due to his talent as a cake decorator, worked long and hard with fellow Yale bakers Lisa Sundwall and Pedro Rivera to make the four-by-ten-foot replica of Old Campus. The cake was quickly consumed after President Richard C. Levin and New Haven Mayor John DeStefano sliced into it and fed one another during a welcoming ceremony for guests at Yale's public birthday party. To create the culinary model of Old Campus, the bakers took photographs of the brick and stone buildings on the most historic part of the campus, where Yale's oldest building, Connecticut Hall, is situated. They also used an architectural blueprint of Old Campus to help them replicate as closely as possible the scale and design of the buildings. They even gave careful attention to such details as walkways, trees and lampposts. Baking began almost a week before the open house, when the bakers mixed 113 pounds of sugar, 840 eggs, 90 pounds of cake flour and 60 pounds of shortening to make 40 sheets of pound cake, each weighing 10 pounds. Then, using cardboard cutouts of Old Campus buildings as guides, the bakers cut up the sheets of cake in the shape of the freshman dormitories, Connecticut Hall, Dwight Hall and other Old Campus buildings. Throughout the process, the separate sections of cake were kept fresh in a giant refrigerator. The bakers topped off the cake with a generous amount of white buttercreme frosting, using food dye to replicate the browns and reds of the buildings' stone and brick and the green of grassy areas. The frosting alone required some 240 pounds of powdered sugar and 150 pounds of shortening in addition to vanilla and butter flavoring. For the final details, the bakers used black licorice and royal icing to create lampposts, and they placed dried flowers in the spots where trees grace the Old Campus. Black lines of decorative icing delineated individual bricks on the historic buildings. Gulino, with support from dining halls services manager Dan Flynn, spearheaded the project -- his biggest challenge yet in his eight years at Yale. He learned his decorating skills from his father, who was also a baker, and honed his talent at the Commons Bake Shop, making scores of birthday cakes for Yale staff and students and for special University events. Before making the Tercentennial birthday cake, his proudest accomplishment was crafting a giant bust of former Bulldogs football coach Carm Cozza to mark the occasion of his retirement. Gulino's other creations have included a cake modeled on the Dr. Seuss character The Grinch and a replica of the New Haven Free Public Library. A few days before the Open House, Gulino admitted that he was somewhat relieved that he had to be out of town on the day of the celebration and would, therefore, miss seeing the cake transported and cut up into pieces. "I've lost sleep all week just thinking about this cake, and so has my wife," Gulino said during a gathering of reporters and news photographers in the Bake Shop for a sneak preview of the cake. "It took so long to make it, and I know from experience what can happen when you're working with layers of cake. It can always tilt, and frosting can get runny. There are any number of things that can happen to it when it's being moved from one place to another. And I worry about all of them happening." As it turned out, what the hordes of onlookers at Hewitt Quadrangle saw was a perfect creation rich in both sweetness and symbolism. As the crowd cheered "We want cake, we want cake!" Levin and DeStefano made the first slices into the bakers' work of art. And soon after, Yale's 300th birthday cake became yet another part of University history. -- By Susan Gonzalez T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S Yale kicks off 300th birthday Science Hill was a popular spot during Yale's open house Museums welcome the public at behind-the-scene tours The sweet and savory tale of a 300-pound cake Peabody Museum opening Hall of Native American Cultures New Republic editor describes his political coming-of-age The new Gilder Boathouse is dedicated at a ceremony Comedian Bill Cosby to perform as a benefit for L.E.A.P. 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