Time for a fun summer cake! With the heat of summer coming to the south early this year, I felt the need to make a pool cake.

I started with two 11x9 sheet cakes, one in chocolate and one in french vanilla just for fun. I stacked them with buttercream icing and cut out the center of the top one for the pool. Next, I mixed up some blue vanilla icing for the water and smoothed in into the pool area. To make it glossy like water, once the icing crusted I brushed on some piping gel. This was my first time using it and I was really impressed with how well it worked. Next I went about making the tiles. Using fondant, I cut out four separate sections for each patio side on the top of the cake and indented them at one inch with a toothpick for tiles. I had cut out individual white tiles to line the pool itself thinking it would be easier to get them down in there that way. They separated just a bit as the cake settled in so if I were to do it again, I would probably make the same tile strips that I did the for patio area.

The hot pink towel was made by simply cutting out a fondant rectangle and indenting each end twice with a toothpick. I bent it just a little as it cured so it wasn't just laying flat. The diving board is just white fondant but for an extra touch, it was lightly coated in sugar on the top so it has that same rough, no-slip surface. I was nervous about shaping the legs mostly because I'm not comfortable making people yet. But legs and feet were easy enough. The second one was harder than the first because it not only had to look human but it also had to match the size of the first one. I just love how they turned out on the cake though. For the outside edging, I made lots of different colored tiles and added them one at a time using just a dab of buttercream for the tastiest spackle ever.

It still needed some shade and I just couldn't resist using a drink umbrella which is the only inedible thing on the cake. I added just a bit more piping gel just to make it really shimmer and she was all done. Anyone want to dive in?

Chances are, the vast majority of you reading this post right now are familiar with Flickr (and if you're not, the quick explanation is that it is a photo sharing website with lots of ways to engage in acts of community). What you may not know is that Slashfood actually has our own Flickr group. It's been around since late summer of 2005 and has more than 5,000 gorgeous, drool-inducing images of food in all states of preparedness.

The amazing thing is that even though we've neglected the group in the recent months, people have still been adding some amazing images to it. What we want to do is to get even more of you involved in adding gorgeous food photography (and accompanying recipes, if you want to share) to the pool so that we can bring back the Photo of the Day feature. We know that there is lots of good cooking, baking, shopping, preserving, roasting and braising going on out there and we want to see some of it. If your photo is selected to be featured, we'll get in touch to let you know, give you full credit for the image/recipe and link to your site/blog (if you have one).

And now, to whet your appetite for all the food gorgeousness that will be coming with the Photo of the Day, the image you see above was submitted to our Flickr pool yesterday by Jennifer at Bake or Break. She talks about these chocolate-filled cupcakes on her blog as well as her love of vanilla paste and her dislike of frosting. And now I want a cupcake!

Part spa, part amusement park - the Yunessun Spa in Japan offers guests the chance to experience green tea, sake, red wine and even coffee in a way that is truly unique. Instead of drinking any of these beverages, visitors to the spa can bathe in them. The sake spa is continuously filled from a huge cask and is said to be good for the skin. The green tea spa is brewed with tea grown at the "foot of the Tanzawa and Hakone mountains" and contains a powerful anti-oxidant that is reputed to enhance the immune system. The wine spa is filled with real red wine, inspired by the fact that Cleopatra loved to bathe in red wine as a rejuvenation treatment in ancient Egypt. Perhaps the most interesting is the coffee spa, which is filled with coffee that is brewed with the natural hot spring water at the spa. Not only will it energize you, but it will energize the skin.

More pictures of the pools after the jump.

[via neatorama]