Congratulations, HiSCI

My boss, Alfred, is the PI of another instrument which was just selected for inclusion on the joint NASA/ESA mission ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. Naturally, this calls for cake!
 
HiSCI doesn't have an official logo yet, but on the proposal they took the nice, glassy Mars logo from HiRISE and replaced that with HiSCI. I'd already decided on an orange cake (y'know, since Mars is orange), and a nice Grand Marnier ganache topping would both go well with the cake and work nicely as the background for the HiSCI logo. I also thought that caramelized sugar would be a great way to make the glossy Mars.
 
While I baked the cakes, I caramelized the sugar, then poured a little into three English muffin tins. I added a bit more sugar to the pan, got it a little darker, and poured that on top of the Marses. Sugar sets up fast, so I had to take a creme brulee torch to the second layer to get it to melt smoothly into the first.
 
I also made a quickie orange cream cheese frosting to go between the cake layers. My idea had been to use that for piping the text as well, but after filling the cakes and giving them a crumb coat, I didn't have enough. I ended up making a tiny bit of cheater buttercream just for piping.
 
I clearly have some work to do in the ganache-pouring arena, or else covering a two-layer square cake is never going to result in the same sort of smooth surface that covering a single round layer can do. My cake looked frosted. Eh. The sugar Mars looked great - I ended up leaving the foil backing to brighten the colors against the dark chocolate - and everyone liked the cake.