Creature Feature Cakes for a rather less grown-up birthday! :)

You should know by now that I am a woman of refined taste. Especially, might I say, when it comes to cinema. I only watch really artistic films; life’s too short for anything less than … say …

LAKE PLACID!

For the uninitiated: shame on you. Watch this trailer and then go and buy the DVD so you can watch the whole film. Do it. Now.

So yes, this year’s feature cakes for our birthdays were actual feature cakes: creature feature cakes. :D I had more fun making them than should be allowed to have! :)

This cake’s a courgette cake, a family recipe and one of my all-time favourites. It’s very moist and lovely and slightly cinnamony. Yum. The croc is a toy, lazy me did not carve one out of marzipan or so … And the lake is made from water, sugar, food colouring and lots of gelatine. Not an easy feat for somebody with my capacity for patience but I pulled myself together and everything worked out nicely in the end!

However! Crocs are obviously not the only creatures who eat humans on the big screen.

Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, behold

SHARKTOPUS

Again, if you don’t know Sharktopus, your life is not as cool as it ought to be. Trust me. You know that you want to watch it.

The sharktopus is a vanilla biscuit rather than a cake but it looks cool and it’s yummy, AND it’s deadly on both ends! :D

I used my shark biscuit cutter and my octopus biscuit cutter for these cool little creatures, then cut off the biscuit dough shark tails and octopus heads and stuck the rest together before baking. A slightly tedious job, but it helps if you giggle maniacally.

You and whose army? – Me and my sharktopus army!

The third creature feature baking project was actually where the original idea for this theme came from. Last year I baked a snake cake together with a friend, so the only logical next step was …

Snakes on a Plane!

It’s actually called “Enough is enough cake” because I’m cool like that, dropping famous film quotes and all. :)

The plane is a lemon tray bake with LOTS of lemon sugar icing and seriously unyummy rice paper for the windows – but it was the right colour, and I think the taste is not strong enough to spoil the cake.

I baked a cocoa and coconut cake for the snakes and covered them in white chocolate cream cheese icing with lots and lots of added food colouring.

Right, that’s it for today. I’m off to plan next year’s birthday cakes… ;) All that’s left to say is:

(Meta-)Kiwi Biscuits

Another Kiwi-themed evening with friends, another Kiwi baking idea. This time, I’m working on many levels. Because I’m cool like that. :-P

First of all, please gather round and admire my kiwifruit biscuits!

I’ve used my nana’s biscuit recipe but filled them with my home-made apple & kiwifruit jam (rather than apricot jam). For the pretty kiwifruit design I used coloured sugar icing and black sesame seeds. I must admit I am really chuffed about the result, definitely well worth the backaches and all the swearing which decorating the biscuits caused!

Next up:
Kiwi kiwi biscuits, featuring a home-made biscuit cutter!

Kiwi* kiwi** biscuit

* I’ve tried a recipe from a NZ-cookbook but you can tell that I didn’t get the dough exactly right; the biscuits taste nice but I’m not happy with the cracked surface. They are also a bit on the dark side*** and SO MANY beaks broke off in the process of making these biscuits, the kitchen looked like the site a right beak massacre. Clumsy baking ahoy!

** If you can’t tell why it’s not only a Kiwi but also a kiwi biscuit, then either I’ve screwed up or you are a bit blind. I like to believe in the latter.

*** If you made Darth Vader breathing sounds when you first read that, you’re my friend! :)

Spider Biscuits

Happy Hallowe’en all around!

Having lived in Germany for the past few years, I’ve watched this holiday emerge here, and I’ve always been very sceptical. You see, there’s no Hallowe’en tradition here. It’s only been introduced quite recently by companies selling chocolate/candy/costumes/… and, well, call me old-fashioned but it all just seems too commercial for my taste. (There are traditional holidays around this time of the year here, but they are celebrated in a very, very different kind of way; pumpkins and costumes and candy are nothing to do with it at all.)

But this year I realised what a great baking occasion Hallowe’en is, and since I am not selling my stuff, my Hallowe’en is not commercial. :)

I made these biscuits for the kids in the family. They are filled with peanut butter and chocolate, a combination that seems so American to me that I thought it was appropriate. :) The spiders on top are dark chocolate, and they were MUCH harder to do than I had anticipated. And I don’t think I’ve emphasised the “much” enough in that sentence. I seriously struggled with the melted chocolate, and you can see from the picture below that some biscuits have mutant spiders on them. But then that goes with the whole Hallowe’en theme again, doesn’t it?

 

Zombie Brains Brownies Cookies

It’s time for some gore again! Today,  I was going to bake Zombie Brains chocolate squares which, sadly, turned out as Zombie Brains Brownie Cookies but hey, you can’t always win. (Darn, I just lost The Game!) At least I got the lovely man at my side to take some cool pictures!

Braaains!

As I said, the base is a sort of brownie cookie – interestingly enough, they weren’t even supposed to be brownies but regular not-too-exciting chocolate squares. Somehow the baking was a weird process today though. In the end, turning them into cookies was the best way in my humble opinion. And since I was all alone in the kitchen, it was only my opinion that counted. I am the sole ruler and tyrannt of my very own little empire!

Ahem.

Back to the baking.

I had an elaborate recipe for a special chocolate icing because I thought regular melted chocolate was too mundane. That’s another thing that went wrong today. So the icing has now been turned into lovely chocolate truffles, and there’s regular melted chocolate on my weird brownie cookies. The zombie brains are walnuts with several layers of greenish sugar icing. They were supposed to be grey but NOTHING EVER GOES RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE! Grrrr. At least the blood looks cool.

I am kind of happy with the result now. Nobody has to know that nothing went the way it was planned, do they? It’s not like that many people are reading this blog. ;)

I am also rather happy with the presentation, if I may say so. This is the perfect occasion for my Fold-Your-Own-Zombie calendar which I got from a very dear friend. (I know you’re reading this. I would still have called you a very dear friend if you didn’t, you know. ;) You can see it in the background of the photos, and thanks to the calendar we even have our very own zombie waiter for tonight’s feast:

Today's special: braaaaaiiins!!

Our friends are arriving any minute now. We’re going to watch Dead Set tonight. Yay! Braaaaaiins!

 

Update: I was inspired to do the zombie brains when I saw this blog; forgot to mention that before. Also: Dead Set. Watch it if you like zombie films or TV series. I really enjoyed it.