|
|
by Barbara Jo
Barbara Jo made this cake version of our logo for a gala party we threw to celebrate our 100th review. Here's her description:
The highlight of the party, if I do say so myself, was my zombie cake, which we named Orville, after the dead guy in Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, though it looked nothing like him. In effect, it was a three-dimensional version of our logo, a zombie rising up out of the grave, or, in this case, rising up out of a field of my homemade French cream candies. The head was made of sour cream chocolate chip cake, dyed red to resemble brain matter, covered with modeling chocolate and various other frosting and hard candy details. The hand was made of mint-flavored hard candy bones covered with chocolate. Green hard candy letters around the perimeter reminded everyone that "They're coming to get you, Barbara." At the height of the party we gathered everyone around it to witness the thrilling moment when raspberry flavored blood spurted from his eyes and poured from his mouth. In fact, it sprayed a bit further than I expected it to. Fortunately only Barbara May and I were hit.
I calculated that, between the cake, the French creams, and the bloody eyeball cordial cherries, I went through 15 pounds of granulated sugar, 2 bags of powdered sugar, 8 large bags of chocolate chips, 2 bottle of corn syrup, 8 pounds of dark chocolate, and 4 pounds of white chocolate. I have a slight tendency to go overboard with these things. We have a lot of eyeballs left over.
The first step is to make the French creams that will be used for the dirt in the zombie presentation. The creams have a flavored fondant center, dipped in chocolate, and then rolled in chopped nuts. Here, Barbara Jo is preparing the fondant by working it on a marble slab.
These are the completed fondant centers. The colors are all flavored differently -- I believe these are chocolate, pistachio, cherry, and orange. At this point, we're five days before the party.
Here, Barbara Jo is tempering the chocolate to prepare it for dipping the creams. She's using a double boiler and candy thermometer.
After the chocolate was tempered, she poured out a portion onto the marble slab. She dipped each fondant center into the chocolate, and then rolled it in the chopped nuts. The candies were completed four days before the party.
| top |