Monday, October 22, 2012

All in Favour of a Creepy Cake Say, "Eye!"

So yeah, Danny dared me to bake an eyeball cake, and because I'm the sort of person that takes baking suggestions from a child, we have an eyeball cake for dessert. With Halloween nearing, I thought I'd share the technique.

You need an oven safe bowl. I used my thirty year old Pyrex mixing bowl. This bowl is also helpful for flying saucers, the domes of Romanesque cathedrals, and other crap you'll be required to bake in a rounded shape. What? You don't bake Romanesque cathedrals? What sort of freaks don't bake Romanesque cathedrals? Get off of my blog.

You'll also want a sturdy cake. I use the gold cake recipe in the 1950 Betty Crocker cookbook as it has only egg yolks, which makes for a cake that holds a shape well. It also cuts easily, should you need other architectural elements for your cathedral. I wouldn't go Gothic with cake though-flying buttresses, arches and all that...I mean, there's a limit to what cake (or gingerbread) can do. Did I mention Danny dared me to do Chartres in gingerbread? In a moment of...I dunno...calculated risk, I really considered doing it, but the thought of smashing boiled sweets to melt into a rose window killed it for me.

You'll want to frost your eyeball white in a crumb coat, then pipe on red veins across the lower surface. For the centre I used a round cookie cutter as a guide, and filled it with coarse sanding sugar. For the pupil I rolled out a piece of soft licorice, cut it into a round, and made a white dot in the corner with extra icing. That was it-the eyes have it (sorry). Eye would show it to you (sorry again) but the computer won't recognise my camera. Eye need to get that fixed (gah).

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