How gross is this!!! It is a Zombie Head Cake with bloody, oozing brains, a dangling eyeball, chomping teeth, and a swollen protruding tongue. I think this is the most hideous cake I have every made. And 5 year old Jaxx LOVED IT. Happy Birthday, Jaxx!
Here is a view of the brains...
Yuck!! The main focus of this cake was the zombie head, and because I'm not a very good sculptor, I made the head using a mold.
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The Walking Dead Zombie mold is described as a gelatin mold, but it worked fine with fondant. I tinted some Wilton white fondant with some Juniper Green food gel. I mixed the fondant with LOTS of Tylose Powder/Gum-Tex Powder so the fondant would harden into a rock hard mask. I also dusted the mold with corn starch to make sure the fondant wouldn't stick to the plastic.
Once everything was dusted in corn starch, I firmly pressed the wad of fondant into the mold. I used my thumb and fingers to make sure the fondant was pressed deeply into all the indentation. Then after two days of drying time, I popped the fondant mask out of the mold. This is what I got - Yikes!
I didn't think the eyes of the mask were big and icky enough, so I added white, blue and black fondant to make a huge eyes. The second eye was going to be dangling from the face so I didn't add an eye there. I also added bigger white teeth on top of the teeth of the mold. I wanted those pearly-whites BIG.
For the cake itself, I frosted it in a brownish American Buttercream, and then for the lumpy texture I dabbed on super soft frosting with a wadded up piece of plastic wrap. On top of the cake you can see an acrylic disk covered in Glad Press N' Seal. I use these Cake Safe disks to get the sides of my cake super straight and the top flat. You can read more about it HERE.
To help support the open cavity of the zombie's brain (and to help secure the head to the cake) I used a 5" half sphere cake under the head.
Here is the zombie head attached to the cake. I added some more green fondant to the lower portion of the skull. The open portion will be covered with the brains. You can also see that I attached the second eye. I made the eyeball out of gum paste and attached it to a wire. Once the eyeball was dry, I secured the wire to the inside of the skull and covered the wire with lumps of white, black, and red fondant. I also dusted the green fondant of the face with brown, black, yellow, and green petal dust. The colored dust just gives the flesh a more realistic look. (If you consider zombies real.)
After this I just added the pink fondant for the brains. I also mixed a little red petal dust with some piping gel and applied it to the brain. The tinted piping gel gave the brains a slimy look. I also added some black, stringy fondant hair and some red candy melt blood to finish off the look. I went a little overboard with the blood, and I had to chip some of the candy blood off of the cake once it hardened.
So what do you think? Is it totally gross?
And so the party wasn't a total gross-fest, I made some cute-ish brainy skull cookies to go with the cake. See, exposed zombie brains can be cute.
Cute!
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