Zombie Cake

I made a Zombie cake this weekend! I had a blast making this one. The cake itself was a half sheet size; I used dark chocolate cake filled with chocolate fudge and frosted with silky smooth, chocolate Italian meringue buttercream. The "dirt" on top of the cake was made with finely crushed Oreo cookies, partly for aesthetic appeal and also because the birthday boy loves and requested Oreo cookies in his cake. I was very pleased with the way it turned out. By the way, it took almost an entire bag of Oreos to get enough crumbs to completely cover the top of the cake!

Bonus: Anyone who knows me knows that I love Halloween. It's my favorite time of year!! When I delivered the cake, the customer had a haunted house set up in their basement for the birthday party the next day, complete with a fog machine, strobe lights, music from the Halloween movie, and a Michael Myers with blinking red eyes! Super creepy! And guess who got a sneak peak?? It was unexpected and I was so scared! That being said, I am *always* a scaredy cat in haunted houses. It's the suspense that gets to me. The longer I go without something jumping out at me the scarier it gets! There was only one "jump out at you" monster, but I was told that there will be 5 monsters at the actual birthday party. Love that I got a taste of Halloween in the middle of July! :)



Here is a close up of the brain and eyeballs. For the brain I piped on buttercream that was tinted to a fleshy tone and then painted on details using watered down red gel color. The eyeballs were made with rice crispy treats, shaped into a ball about a teaspoon in size, and covered in fondant. The details on the eyeballs were hand painted.


This photo shows close up detail of the hand coming out of the grave, as well as the "tombstone." The hand were made of rice crispy treats covered in fondant, and the tombstone was made with only fondant. You can see from the writing on the stone just how silky the italian meringue buttercream icing was!


Finally, a few up close shots of the face showing the details. The birthday boy requested gummy worms, and I like that they added color and texture to the cake!