Swamp Monster Cake

Every year, the elementary school PTO holds an Ice Cream Social to coincide with school budget voting day.  It's a good way to ensure lots of traffic to the polling station held across the street at the middle school.  The Ice Cream Social is a lot of fun for the kids and a great fundraiser for the PTO.  We have plenty of carnival type games, inflatables, a cake walk, and of course ice cream.  Never heard of a cake walk?  Here's how it works:  kids hand over a ticket to walk around a circle of numbers, when the music stops they jump on a number, a number is pulled out of a hat(or box) and whoever's number is pulled wins a cake.  They get to choose from 30-40 cakes.  When WD was in elementary school my cake was the first one grabbed every year from K-4th grade.  5th grade it was the 2nd.  I have a reputation to uphold so I usually spend a good deal of time in cake planning.  This year, I made a swamp monster.

The swamp monster was a huge hit with the boys, and got several "oohs" as the kids checked out the cake tables.  Here's how I made it.  I started by greasing and flouring a large pyrex bowl.

I used my basic yellow cake mix recipe that I used in my Strawberry Jello Poke Cake.  I added one pkg of Lime Green Jello mix and 1/2 a cup of rainbow sprinkles, because I wanted the cake to be colorful when cut.

I baked this at 300 for about an hour and 20 minutes.  You'll want to make sure that it's baked all the way through and that a skewer test comes out clean when you pull it out of the oven.  I ran a plastic knife around the edge of the cake,

and turned it out onto a rack to cool completely.

I always bake any cakes that will be decorated the day prior to decorating, because it helps me to keep from getting all frantic about a deadline.  I also make my fondant and color it ahead of time.  These are the colors I used.

I put the bulk of it in the frig in ziplock baggies divided up by color.  For this cake, I made my "victim" ahead too.  This gave it ample drying time, so that it wouldn't be floppy when I put the cake together.

The morning of the Ice Cream Social, I put the cake together.  I started by cutting out a mouth for the swamp monster.

I then frosted the entire cake with a thin layer of buttercream frosting.

I rolled out some dark grey fondant for the mouth and placed it on the cake.  The frosting acts as glue for the fondant.  I went with dark grey instead of black, because the black food color doesn't taste very good if you use too much of it.

I used the cut cake scraps to make cake balls for the swamp monster's eyes.  I mashed the scraps together with a spoonful of frosting, then shaped the mixture into balls.

I rolled out green fondant for the body of the monster, layed it on top, and cut away the excess with scissors at the mouth and a pizza roller at the bottom edge.  I turned the cut edge under to create a lip around the mouth, covered the cake balls with white fondant, and added more green fondant hoods for the eyes.

I rolled out tentacles, and used all the leftover fondant to cover the cake board.  I wasn't concerned about the mix of colors, because it's a swamp.


I carefully moved the cake over onto the covered cake board for finishing.  I wrapped the victim in a tentacle and attached it to the cake.  I then attached the rest of the tentacles, and covered the monster in spots.  Notice the aluminum foil.  Any unsupported bits of fondant will get all floppy and fall over.  The foil is just there long enough for the fondant to stiffen up.  (an hour or more depending on your home's humidity level.)


After a couple of hours I felt it was safe to remove the foil, and brush off any excess powdered sugar with a pastry brush.  I finished the cake with some green decorating gel around the monster.  The perfect slimy finish to this cake.


Thanks for popping in and baking with me.  I'm linking this to Somewhat Simple's Strut Your Stuff.