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"Now is probably as good a time as any to introduce you to my ridiculous phobia of sharks; I am so scared of them that I won&amp;#039;t jump into a swimming pool at night by myself. That said it was difficult to watch this episode of Ace of Cakes due to its sharky nature. Duff certainly helped to alleviate my anxiety by hilariously screaming like a girl (like I would) when he was in the shark filled aquarium tank and just seeing him in a wet suit tickled me for some reason. The Sweet Pea Shark Ray cake itself was pretty cute with its Cabbage Patch Kid doll eyes and polka dotted flesh, but I could have done without seeing the real Sweet Pea and her fearsome toothy cohorts. My favorite touch was the use of graham cracker crumbs as &amp;quot;sand&amp;quot; on the base and to hide the wooden supports. And now on to this week&amp;#039;s prizes...The most improved cake award has to go to the Mastiff doggie, since it seemed like a hot mess up until it was finished. When Ben picked up a round layered cake and said that would be the head, I was a bit skeptical, but by the time he finished the construction, it actually looked like a dog. I was slightly thrown by the use of chocolate plastic as an undercoat before the fondant layer; it was explained that they wanted a smoother surface for the fondant to lie on. Not that fondant is particularly tasty, but chocolate plastic is downright yucky! To be fair, I am a chocolate snob and it is a very handy tool if you want to make &amp;quot;chocolate&amp;quot; roses or other such edible brown decorations; I had just never seen it as a base layer before. After Sherri air brushed the entire dog, it looked like a mess of black lacquer, but when it dried-Magic! That cake was just perfect, right down to the dog tag. But the prize for favorite cake, hands-down, was the Rambo Rubber Ducky. How did a lady rubber duckie come to don a machine gun? Well, since the groom met his bride at the super market, she became Super Market Girl, which shortened into SMG, and logically became sub machine gun...Of course! I just thought it was adorable from the back-story to the eyeliner to the camouflage bow; I loved everything about it. Seeing the rubber ducky with a huge gaping hole in her face and watching them hammer and re-hammer the dowel into her beak-hole was definitely nerve-wracking, but so worth the end result. Nicely done, Elena-your cake won my favorite of the bunch! Episode aired 8/14/08 "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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