Zombies

Before you get really worried, our house was not attacked by zombies…although Dave and our friend Thadd have a plan in case zombies ever do attack Culpeper.  Instead, the crisis of last week revolved around making a Zombie cake for Thadd’s birthday.

When we heard about Thadd’s upcoming birthday and his plan to cater his own celebratory dinner, Dave and I started thinking about what we could do for him.  Since Dave and Thadd fear/look forward to the above-mentioned zombie attack, Dave thought making a zombie cake would be a great gift.  He searched the internet for inspiration and found this cake.  He got Shawn, Thadd’s partner, and me on board.  Shawn may be a personal chef, but pastry is not her thing, and while I can bake a tasty dessert, I just don’t have the advanced pastry or art skills necessary for this kind of project.  We had Dave, however.  

Dave is a landscape designer with a large streak of warped creativity.  On top of that, he has a bit of cake decorating experience as I gave him a class as a birthday gift when we lived in AZ.  Dave was confident he could come up with something that would work, so the project began.

Dave and Shawn did some advance planning, came up with a shopping list, and made plans to meet at our house on Thursday night while Thadd was at spin to get as much done as possible.  Here comes the first crisis……

We wanted a tasty cake since this would be the dessert (which Thadd had asked me to bring to the party).  Dave tried a new yellow cake recipe late that afternoon, but it didn’t rise…at all!

cakes should be thicker than cellphones!

Plan B involved me buying box cake mix on my way home from work.  We then spent the night bakeing off 4 more cake layers while trying to figure out what we could get our hands on in Culpeper or Fredericksburg to let us make a hand.  Clearly day one of the great zombie cake experiment resulted in very little accomplished except for frustrating Thadd who had no idea why his girlfriend needed to be gone for three hours on his actual birthday while still coming home empty handed.

On Friday, I suggested that Dave make another 2 layers as I was worried we wouldn’t have enough height to get a credible head sculpted.  While he baked these off, I stopped at tons of different stores to try to find candy we could use to decorate the face and make the hand.  Then Dave, Shawn, and I assembled at our house again to create our very own zombie! (although Dave did most of the work and Shawn and I mostly served as photgraphers)

Dave gets started with our handy electric knife!

it eventually results in something vaguely face-shaped

white frosting for skull and gray/green for zombie skin

Dave sculpts zombie teeth out of lemon and vanilla tootsie rolls

hot tamales and honey served as the brains

chocolate covered cherries with the bottoms removed served as eyes

now the endless hair creation begins...

the eye even began to drip!

can't forget to add the blood

Shawn and I finally get into the act by crushing the cookies for dirt

the final piece: sculpting the tootsie roll hand

who knew there was a use for necco wafers: zombie fingernails

after 4.5 hours, we were done for the night, but our kitchen was a disaster (for days)

The final product!

Thadd's surprise made it all worth it

notice how the sideburns match!

who doesn't have a huge knife on hand for slicing up zombies

and just for Thadd…..notice the detail Dave carved into the teeth:

So, at the end of the day, I may have earned a place in the van in the event of a zombie attack by being part of this great suprise (plus I make a mean rum cake, but that’s another post).

For Thadd’s own take, check out his blog, and for more photos, check out Shawn’s flickr page.