Frank, the orange and white snake

Hello again out there in cyber world. Nice of you to come and visit me again!

Fall is in the air, the mornings are cold and the afternoons still feel like summer. It is gorgeous out here in the Valley with all the leaves turning and the sky the lovely fall blue. This is one of my favourite times of the year.

This week I had an order placed by the lovely Miss Sarah on behalf of her nearly two year old son Toby. As it is was dictated to her by her other son Simon (Toby's older brother) this year for Toby's second birthday he was to have a snake cake. Simon insisted that this is what Toby wants and so I happily accepted the challenge.

I batted around lots of ideas in my head about how to make this one. In the end I couldn't get the image of a snake climbing up and around a tiered cake out of my head so that is what I made. The flavour of choice was chocolate cake and between the layers is my favourite, vanilla buttercream (I know, I am simple...).

The cake is two tiers and covered in vanilla, coloured green, buttercream grass.

The snake was a bit more of a challenge. I didn't want to wrap a tube or hose with fondant, which was my original thought. Then I contemplated making him out of modelling chocolate but to get the size I wanted it would have cost a small fortune to make it! In the end I ventured back into the world of rice krispie treat sculpting.  My first endevour with this was for a giant figure skate on a patch of ice and I had a horrible time getting it to stay together, and it wound up weighing a tonne! But I figured rolling a giant tube of rice krispie is easier than making a skate....

The end product turned out pretty good! It was tricky getting it to stay put on the rise between layers and he is a bit lumpy in places. I still haven't mastered smoothing the RKT out for icing and my RKT is still a bit soft. I first stacked it on cake pans to get the shape and then pretty much ruined it transferring it to the cake... sigh. Life lessons ya know?

I wrapped him in orange and white fondant, added some eyes and scoring to make a scaley appearance and voila! A snake in the grass!

Hopefully Toby will be happy. And hopefully Simon will approve! Happy 2nd birthday Toby. Time flies and I really can't believe he is already 2...

Next week: Deanna and Jason get married!!
Take care,
Sandy