Groom's Cake

As if doing chalkboards and making rice and beans for 300 people weren't enough to keep me busy, I also volunteered to do Jack's groom's cake. I knew I was the only one that would be crazy enough to introduce some Notre Dame into the reception. All of Susan's family is from the South, and are HUGE Crimson Tide and Gator's fan (BLEH!), so I had to rub the gold in their faces a little.

Once I decided on doing a golden helmet, there was no going back. It was simple enough, and I was surprised when it went fairly well and I ended up with something resembling a helmet. The tricky part, that made me want to pull out my hair, was the fondant face mask. Here's a small list of other things that made me cringe: getting the main icing layer to look smooth, having to hunt down vodka to mix with the gold paint, and trying to get round cake balls to look like oblong footballs. The final touch was making my own version of the "Play Like a Champion Today" sign.  Other than that, I was pretty impressed with myself. Here's how it went....

I was hoping to find some blue velvet cake, but it's too hard to find in the grocery store, so I went with red velvet. The stuff looks like blood and guts, just FYI

I made 3 large cakes

Then frosted between each layer, pushed in some lollipop sticks for support, then put in the freezer for a while

Once hard, I was brave enough to carve the cake into the shape of a helmet, then did a "crumb coat" before icing the main layer. 

.01 ounces of gold luster dust. 

It's a little sloppy-looking in this picture, but I cleaned it up for the reception. I just liked how metallic the gold paint looked. IF I were to ever do this again, I'd use gumpaste for the facemask, instead of fondant, since gumpaste dries completely solidly, like a rock. Fondant will go hard when cooled, but will re-soften when room temperature. So, even when I got it to look how I wanted, it would get messed up shortly after, when it warmed up again. GRRRR!

If you're now brave enough to try this yourself, let me give you some tips....

Pick a cake that DOESN'T dye your kitchen counter red

But, if you're dumb like me and end up doing it anyway, Lysol spray with bleach is a miracle worker! Completely got rid of any trace of red. Just don't get it on your clothes!!

All clean!!!

Once the cake is ready to be iced, put wax paper down on your cake plate before putting on the cake. You can be as
sloppy as you want, and then all you have to do is pull out the wax paper 

And lastly, if you're using "luster dust" paint, it requires a clear alcohol for application (because it dries quickly and clearly). I didn't want to have to go out to the liquor store just for 3 tablespoons of vodka, so my mom asked one of her neighbors if we could have some. It just so happened that the next time we would see each other would be at the temple that night for Susan's endowments, so we arranged a hand off in the parking lot. I felt so naughty!! Thankfully I didn't get pulled over on the way home with my open container of alcohol. A sub-tip to this is that I don't necessarily think I needed the vodka. The icing was sticky enough after pulling the cake out of the freezer, that I got the best metallic results when I just used my finger to apply it over the icing.