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Obviously, it would not be very fitting to simply plop a severed arm down on a cookie sheet and call it done. No, I needed a more appropriate base. I decided to go with a sidewalk - simple enough not to distract from the central composition of arm and rats, large enough to give ample room for bloody piping gel rat footprints, apt yet non-specific enough to allow the viewer to construct the scenario of his or her choice around this glimpse of carnage.
I bought a sheet of 3/8" foamcore, figuring that the standard 3/16" foamcore that I use for the cake bases wouldn't be sturdy enough to support that many rats. After carefully studying the sidewalk in front of Barbara May's house, I was ready to begin. First, I made the grout line between two sidewalk squares with some light grey icing and a large scooped decorating tip.
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I mixed three different colors of royal icing to use for the small round rocks embedded in the concrete. Using two different sized round decorating tips for each color I piped dots of icing them squished them down and simultaneously textured them with a damp rag. This took much longer than I expected it to, but eventually I had a good coverage of small rocks, which had to dry before the next step.
I used a modified run in icing technique for the concrete. I made two shades of grey icing and watered them down just a bit, so they were easy to spread, but not as thin as regular run in icing. I filled a pastry bag with both colors at once to get a nice random variation of color and attached a wide, flat tip. I used the bag to fill in icing around each rock, then used a knife to spread icing in the larger areas. This took much longer than I had anticipated and I was soon cursing myself for making so many stupid little rocks.
Once that layer of icing had dried it was time to paint. In order to maker the sidewalk look distressed and dirty I went in with some black food coloring and painted stains, mostly around the grout line and around the edges. A thin black ribbon glued around the perimeter of the foamcore finished off the edge nicely.
At this point I'm in a position to describe for you the dramatic conclusion of my cake making saga, but I'm going to pause for moment and go off on a few tangents describing a few other culinary marvels of our party. Hopefully, this will heighten the tension for you and make my eventual return to the cake itself all the more enjoyable.
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