As you might know – this week is SHARK WEEK! Since I have four boys – we watch a lot of Animal Planet around here, and Shark Week is kind of a big deal. I was thinking of something fun we could do to celebrate in our own little sharky way – and I remembered this cake I made for my son James a few years ago. It wasn’t too difficult to do – and it made a big splash with the kids! I was trying to remember my exact pattern, but I’m fairly sure I didn’t have one. I just kept carving on my cake as I went along (Seat of my pants, that’s me!) Anyway – if you want to draw it out on paper first, I’ve found that can help when you get to the cake cutting stage.
Here’s what you’ll need:
- (2) cakes, baked as directed, one as a sheet cake, one baked in a loaf pan
- Candy Corn (for the teeth)
- Homemade buttercream icing (Recipe Here)
- 2 Chocolate Chips (for the eyes)
- Pink, Grey & Blue Food coloring
Instructions:
- Bake the sheet cake and spread a crumb coat of blue icing on it. You’ll be able to add more icing in a choppy-wavey pattern later.
- Bake the second cake in a loaf pan, overfilling it a bit so that it gets that fat round top. Take it out, cool completely, and freeze it for a couple hours. (This will make it much easier to slice later.)
- Cut the frozen loaf in half lengthwise. The top rounded half will be the the top of the shark (his back), the smaller flatter bottom will be his lower half (mouth).
- Cut the flat bottom of the loaf cake in half - giving you two smaller squares.
a) 1st small square: Carve into a fin (basically cut it in half diagonally so it makes a triangle) Eat the extra triangle, you deserve it!
b) 2nd small square: Carve the points off of one side until it looks rounded (like the pink shark’s mouth in the photo above) Spread pink icing all over it. - Assemble! Using globs of icing as glue, assemble your shark on top of the blue sheet cake.
Start by lying down your rounded pink square for the mouth. Now carefully set the top half of your loaf cake on top of it at an angle – so that it looks like the shark is coming out of the water. You’ll need to trim the rear end off at a slant so it lies nicely resting on top the square mouth – and here’s the part where you’ll sort of play it by ear. (Don’t worry – just fill in the gaps with squirts of icing as you go along.) Glue the fin to the back of the shark with more icing. - Thickly pipe on grey icing to cover the shark and his fin (covering any gaps and crumby parts in the process) Make side fins by piping grey icing next to the shark as shown.
- Cut the white tips off candy corn, and stick them into the icing around the mouth – for rows of vicious teeth!
- Place chocolate chips on for eyes.
- Add more blue icing around the shark with a spreader – pulling up into little wave crests here and there. This comes last – because now you can hide any more gaps or crumbs around your shark.
Making 3 dimensional cakes isn’t an exact science I’ve found – but as long as you have some extra icing to pipe into the architectural snafus here and there – you can cover it all up at the end and noone will be the wiser!
Now it’s time to sit back and enjoy (er… cringe through) some shark week programming – with a slice of Great White and a nice cold glass of milk. Yum!
