Cake for 3,000 : Rev. Schuller Marks 60th With Colossal Confection

When the Crystal Cathedral stopped vibrating from three choruses of “Happy Birthday to You,” and the thunderous applause from 6,000 hands died down Sunday morning, the Rev. Robert Schuller strode through the buttercream-scented air, beneath two arches of rainbow-hued balloons and approached The Cake.

The colossal confection’s ingredients list alone was enough to make the cellulite tremble with anticipation: 1,000 eggs, 200 pounds of flour, 250 pounds of sugar, 125 pounds of oil, 70 pounds of carrots, 35 pounds of walnuts, 17 pounds of cocoa, 75 pounds of buttermilk, 60 pounds of pineapple and 500 pounds of buttercream.

It took three days to bake, seven cars to deliver, an hour to assemble and 21 women to slice and serve the one-ton, 13-tiered, 10-foot-tall sweet, which was surrounded with 13 sheet cakes and graced with 60 blue and six white tapers. The bill: $2,000.

The occasion was the charismatic cleric’s 60th birthday and the sixth anniversary of the huge, glass-walled cathedral. Between Schuller’s 9 and 10:45 a.m. services--both based on his new book, “Be Happy You Are Loved”--an estimated 3,000 worshipers gathered to pay homage and taste the carrot and chocolate fudge cake.

The celebration was well in character for a ministry that arranged to have the Hands Across America benefit for the homeless snake through its football field-sized cathedral. That had soprano Beverly Sills sing at its $1,500-a-seat opening-night gala. That has played stage to Lawrence Welk, Victor Borge, Fred Waring and assorted marching bands. That has 14 listings in the telephone book, from “Book Center for Possibility Thinkers” to “Wedding Consultant.”

Last May, a birthday party for another cleric was slightly more austere.

Pope John Paul II’s 66th birthday was celebrated with a cake of merely two tiers of white chocolate adorned with a bas-relief portrait of the pontiff in dark chocolate. Although the pontiff’s pastry took nearly a month to bake, it was delivered to St. Peter’s Square in a single refrigerator van.

But Sunday morning, 4-year-old Kevin Harris wasn’t interested in comparisons between Rome and Garden Grove. As the Placentia boy busied himself licking the chocolate from his Styrofoam plate, his sister, Lisa, 9, approached with a fresh piece of cake.

“Hey, Mom,” he cried, “Lisa’s got seconds. Can I have seconds?”