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!
The acrylic painting of the Maher’s PubMaher’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:
Horizontal slice into the fudge cake
prepping to make the pub
next layer – made from 2 off-cuts of the loaf size fudge cake
whipping cream- of course!
and the roof layer of cake – the chimney did not stay, but that’s cool.
crumb coat
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’s body cake
the Grabber body with whipping cream and cherry pie filing between the layers – chilling vertically.
getting the layout figured out
icing sugar and cocoa powder
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 body of the Grabber sneaking up
The Grabber and the Pub < off to chill>
The Grabber and the Pub…#grabbermovie
The Grabber Babies:
Just a half dozen cupcakes from the remaining cake mix…
Poking cherries into the cupcakes.
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!!
dipped in 72% dark chocolate
Baby Grabber Cake pop!
The displays:
I could not achieve a tiny version of this for the pub – so here’s a cookie version instead !
1 ½ cups whole wheat flour
½ cups carob powder
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoons ginger
½ teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoons baking powder
⅓ cup coconut oil
¼ cup honey
¼ cup molasses
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
½ cup water [ you can use coffee if you like]
Method
Cream together the coconut oil [looks more like shortening to me than oil], honey, molasses, and cider vinegar.
Mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl until well blended.
Alternately add the dry ingredients and the water to the coconut mixture, mixing well in between additions.
Make 12 cupcakes or 24 mini cupcakes and bake at 375 degree for about 10 minutes. Check with a toothpick to confirm done,but they are vegan so they can be gooey inside too!
Sprinkle the top with coconut, nuts, seeds or whatever you like.
I had a great time – congrats to the organizers for a very successful day!
