The Armadillo Cake

I've seen the movie Steel Magnolias about 10 times so when a friend asked me to make a bleeding armadillo grooms cake for her sister's wedding, I knew exactly what she was talking about. The prospect of making a shaped cake (a la cake boss) was a little nerve-wrecking because I've never made a 3-D shaped cake, never used fondant and it was for a wedding! Making it turned out to be a ton of fun and I'm pretty sure everyone loved it!


Day 1
I started out by making three separate batches of red velvet cake. Two batches were poured into football shaped pans, one was poured into a rectangular shaped pan. I used my favorite red velvet recipe from epicurious.com
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Red-Velvet-Cake-with-Raspberries-and-Blueberries-108256

Then I made a buttercream for the filling by hand whisking 6 egg whites and 3/4 cup of superfine sugar over a double boiler to make a meringue.

The meringue was added to the electric mixer and beat for 20 minutes, then the I added the butter; 2 sticks. I was able to refrigerate it and use it the next day for assembly.

Day 2
The cakes were cooled so I piled them and shaped then with a sharp serraded knife. I used the buttercream as the glue between the layers.

I used store bought fondant which I colored with brown, black and green food dyes to make a gray color. Three things I learned about fondant for the future:
1. don't roll it too thin
2. don't make any indentation unless you want it to be permanent
3. its really floppy

I assembled the beast and painted him with food dye. The cake was then delivered (with the help of my sis) and voila! my first shaped fondant covered cake!