Little Red is at it again! She baked a Swamp People cake for Big Red's 40th birthday! He was so surprised and very impressed! It was based on their favorite show, Swamp People from the History channel.
LR is only 12 but she designed the whole cake. We sat down and she drew out what she wanted, and I helped her decide what foods we could use to make it work. She came up with most of those ideas too! Then we spent the day before the party making all the decorations to go on the cake. We decided it would be best to put them on the morning of the party instead of the night before. Very smart move!
As for the cake itself, it was a box mix and can frosting. We will work on more homemade confections next time. The decorations were the focus. Click on photos to see them larger.
What we used:
Nutter Butter Cookies: gator and Big Red (you can see how I hinged the gator's mouth in the photo)
M&Ms and Peanut M&Ms: Big Red's hat (I sawed a bit off with a knife so they would fit together better)
Marshmallows: (when you cut them they are sticky so you can add colored sugar!) lilipads, flowers, and gator eyes
Twix bars: logs (ran out of room on the cake for these)
Crunch bar crumbles: various rocks and broken logs pieces (ran out of room on the cake)
Candy sprinkles: Hair, eyes, nose, & mouth for Big Red, gator's teeth
Sugar sprinkles: red- the red in the marshmallow flowers and green- on the marshmallow lilipads
Watermelon (green) candy roll (this is like fruit by the foot with sugar on it): gator tail, snake, grasses
Gummy bears: gophers or swamp critters of some sort
Tootsie Rolls: These can be rolled and shaped just like playdoh or our favorite polymer clay! Rifle stock, scope on rifle, heart shaped rock, flower on rock, and Big Red's glasses!
Gummy Fish: Fish
Crunch Bars: (two- one is the base and the other was sliced carefully to make the sides) boat
Blue Gel icing: waves in water, centers of flowers
Green Cookie icing: green on top of cake, gator, and pants
Red Cookie Icing: shirt, mouth of gator
Pretzel sticks: fishing pole, gator lines, arms, legs of Big Red, rifle
Peanut Cluster: Turtle
Mini Chocolate chips: Button on Big Red's pants, feet and tail for turtle
Mini Miniature Reese's Cups (the tiny ones): stumps in the water
*The only inedible things were the signs, of course, and the dental floss we used for the gator and fishing lines.
To attach things we used Baker's Chocolate. We bought one of those microwaveable bowls with the bits of chocolate in it. We put one or two of the chocolate pieces in a small glass bowl at the time, then we sat the bowl in a strainer and the strainer sat in the top of a larger bowl of hot water. This kept our "glue" ready the whole time.
The main sign was printed from the ChootEm.com website, which is the official website for Troy Landry the "King of the Swamp". Of course, this only makes sense to you if you watch the show. Then we typed his name in Chiller font. It was free somewhere on the net. Just Google it. She made a small tag to go in the boat with 40 on it. This is supposed to be the "gator tags" limit for him. Finally we printed a small banner flag with Happy Birthday on it and cut it into a forked tip (like a snakes tongue). By dragging the flag through my fingers it created a bit of a wave or furl. Nice! We rolled the edges of all signs onto either BBQ skewers or a toothpick to stand it up.
What I would do differently: do not put cookie icing on the things. It ran and changed colors when it got cold and then condensation made it weep.It was Wilton brand, and I still think it would be a great product, if it weren't so runny. I plan to use it to color frosting for cakes in the future. Or at least try it that way.
My favorite part: spending time with my daughter. It's always nice to spend time with my girls, but Little Red was doing something that she loves to do, which made the whole even even more special and memorable!
Thanks for stopping by today! Leslie and Little Red!
