Cake – 05.23.09
Dan and Colleen asked me over a year ago to do their wedding cake. They already knew they wanted to incorporate zombies and themselves as the topper. So I’ve had a year to dream up this unusual but absolutely amazing idea of a cake for two of the most wonderful people in the world.
Over the past month we’ve worked out the major details for the cake and decided on the following: Green, three tiered round cake to feed 80, 2 zombies climbingup the cake, the happy couple huggingon top, purple flower accents, with alternating cake flavors of yellow with buttercream and triple fudge chocolate with chocolate hazelnut cream cheese frosting all covered in homemade marshmallow fondant. With all the details sorted out, I was ready for the challenge.
Ben and I started sculpting the zobmiesa week ago with clay, but after creating such realistic disturbing zombie faces, we decided they were just not right for the cake. So Monday and Tuesday, I pulled out photos of Dan and Colleen and created their faces along with the zombies. For Dan and Colleen’s faces, I rounded out flesh colored fondant and made indentions for the white eyes to sit in. I used a black edible marker to dot in their pupils so that they would be looking at each other when placed on the cake. I used the end of a straw to make the shape of their smiles and rounded up a small ball of fondant for their noses. I used a toothpick to press in the nostrils. For her rosey cheeks, I put pink luster dust on my hand and rubbed it around to get just a hint on my fingertip, and then applied it to her cheeks. For her eyelashes I used the black edible marker and drew a line over her eyes out to the eyelashes. For the zombies, I rolled up gray fondant for their faces. I made their eye sockets deeper and colored in a dark circle before putting their eyes in place. After attachingtheir noses, I used a tool to poke in their mouths so that they would look like they were open. And finally it was time for all their hair. I purchased an amazing tool about two weeks ago that creates things such as this. You mix up the color hair you want with fondant and add a bit of crisco. You add it to this pump-like tool and it creates small strands of fondant that push out the end. You then take and cut it to the length you want and place it. This seemed to take forever, but gave me the look I was definitely going for. After four hours, the four heads were complete.
For the cake, I made 2-6″ and 2-12″ Round Chocolate Cakes with Chocolate Hazelnut Cream Cheese for the top and bottom tiers. The middle tier was 2-9″ Round Cakes that were Yellow with Buttercream. After frosting each of the tiers, I mixed up green marshmallow fondant and covered each layer. I then stacked the tiers and was ready for the decorations. After Wrapping each tier with black satin ribbon (used to match the black around the waist of her dress) I used the hair tool to make the grass that went around the base of each tier. This took about 2 hours to create, but definitely worth the extra time. I then rolled out purple fondant and created the flowers followed by little white balls to fill the insides. After all the cake was put together, it was time for the bodies of the figures. This was the tricky part.
Ben created a wire frame for me and used aluminum foil to build up the stability of the bodies. I then took fondant and wrapped around the wire until they were fully covered and ready for clothes. We cut out white for the shirts and wrapped black pants with rips around the bottoms of the legs for the zombies. For Dan we used a photo of an army-style jacket Colleen had sent a picture of. We created his white button-up shirt with a collar underneath and placed the black jacket on top with all the pockets. For Colleen, she sent me a photo of her wedding dress that was a beautiful shade of green with a black band around the waist. I wrapped her upper half with flesh-tone fondant and wrapped the green fondant around her torso, followed by the black band. We created Dan and Colleen in two separate pieces for easier transport. We attached the bottom halves of their bodies on top the cake and would place the top halves on when we set up the cake at the reception. Finally after staring at 1PM on Friday afternoon, we finished about 2AM Saturday Morning. So for a total of 20 hours Baking/Decorating, the Zombie Wedding Cake was complete. We packed up the car and headed to Nashville for the Wedding at the Belcourt Theater followed by the reception at the Cuisine of India. What a beautiful day filled with such an amazing amount of love. To the happy couple, I wish you all the best and cannot tell you enough how much you guys mean to us. Love you both!
Special thanks to Ben for spending so many hours planning and sculpting with me and to my parents for the extra help baking. You all mean so much to me. These cakes wouldn’t be possible without your artistic hands and helpful hearts. God Bless
BEEHIVE 