alien birthday cake

Every year, for my fabulous Husband of 22 years’ birthday, I create a cake for him.

It is always based on a “fake” Black Forest style, made with a cake mix, cherry pie filling and whipping cream.

And I try to make it interesting every year that I have the time to do so.

This year, we had watch the movie, Grabbers, and I had already been thinking “tentacles” for the 2020 version, so I was inspired!

I knew I needed cake, and last year I had used a great brown sugar cookie recipe for the face hugger from Alien, so I knew that would work for the tentacles… I did some baking and chilled all the bits.

I spent some time on Friday afternoon looking for images of the Maher’s Pub and did a quick acrylic painting of it, while FaceTiming with my niece – who created a lovely piece as well! I then popped a photo of my painting into Procreate – and added the tentacles for the finished illustration!

Maher’s Pub after the attack.. #Grabbermovie

The following is a photo journey through the process I spent 3 hours completing this morning…

< click on images for captions and to enlarge>

The Pub:

next layer – made from 2 off-cuts of the loaf size fudge cake

and the roof layer of cake – the chimney did not stay, but that’s cool.

Finished the whipping cream stucco on the pub

ok… so, the chocolate icing has micro lumps from the melted chocolate – thus the piping skills of a drunken irishwoman…

The Grabber…

Tentacles made from sugar cookie recipe.

the Grabber body with whipping cream and cherry pie filing between the layers – chilling vertically.

honey dissolving into hot water and lemon

Juniper Green gel colouring into cocoa royal icing

Eggless royal icing coats the cookie tentacles.

tentacles, flipped over, and smoothed with a bit of water and more royal icing.

The Grabber Babies:

Just a half dozen cupcakes from the remaining cake mix…

Prepped with cherries inside and whipped cream on top – ready for the babies to come.

The baby grabbers made from the off-cuts made into cake pops!!

The displays:

I could not achieve a tiny version of this for the pub – so here’s a cookie version instead !

For my final birthday cake, I wanted to create the chest burster, and was originally going to make another black forest cake, but we still had leftovers from the first one. I opted instead to go with a spice cake made from a french vanilla box cake mix.

I used the lower fat version on the box – using applesauce instead of oil, and added about 1 tsp of each – cardamon, allspice, cinnamon,and ginger to the cake batter.

I proceeded as per the box and chose to use 3 pans instead of 2 to speed the cooking time and it gave me more layering of flavours!

**Box mix of french vanilla – used apple sauce instead of oil and added spices!**

Once the cakes cooled, I wanted to have a nice gentle flavour without being too sweet, so I had purchased some pre-made dulce de leche, and mixed about ⅓ cup with a few tablespoons of heavy cream and whipped it all together. I think butterscotch pudding would work in a pinch too 🙂

**dulce de leche** **with heavy cream to be whipped together for the filling**

After slicing off the domes of the layers – making them all level, I stacked the three layers with apple sauce and the dulce/whip fillings.

**layering with apple sauce and then the cream filling.**

**the cream filling over the apple sauce.**

To create a nice base for the insertion of Fred, I built up the top with more sauce and cream filling and the sliced off domes, cutting the centre hole for Fred.

**Capping it off with one of the cut off parts – to create a mound at the top of the cake. The hole is for the little guy!**

And on to normal cake finishing – notes with each picture.

**Crumb coat then chill – butter cream mixed with Dulce de leche.**

**the finishing layer of** **buttercream**.

**I like to smooth out the surface with wet fingers – well washed, of course! It lets the sugar melt just a tiny bit and creates a smoother look.**

The final addition is – let’s call him Fred!

**Sketch from DragoArt which was my inspiration!**

I made him from rice crispie treats. I used pre-made ones as I did not want to purchase everything to make them and have leftover marshmallows etc. – but they are nut free…

The moulding chocolate was a new adventure and these folks here explained it best – so click to check their link – you can see most of the details there.

The difference with mine is that I used honey as a direct substitute for corn syrup and it worked perfectly.