A Halloween Birthday

This year I was in two minds as to whether to make a Halloween cake or not, but once I found out that our friend Mike’s birthday was the same day as our Halloween party, I decided to find the time! I knew I didn’t have a lot of time, so needed something not too challenging or time consuming.  I was considering two ideas, and once I thought about the job one of the party hosts had I had made my mind up 😊  Our friends Kelly & Graeme were hosting the party, and Kelly works at clinics photographing the eyes of diabetic patients. So, I decided to make a gruesome eyeball cake!! I thought Mike would appreciate any gory birthday cake being made for him & us singing to him at the party, so I knew my critic would be Kelly with her in depth knowledge of eyes!! 👀 It was quite hard to find an actual photo of a human eyeball removed from its socket, so I worked from just one picture & Kelly said I did a good job!

The eyeball cake

The eyeball cake

 

A side view showing the gooey optic nerves

A side view showing the gooey optic nerves

I baked a banoffee sponge cake in my hemisphere tins, & made a thick, smooth toffee sauce to stir into my buttercream.  I covered it all with white fondant, and coloured some red/brown fondant to cover the back half of the eye & to cover the optic nerves coming out the back of the eye. I added some texture to it, &  then airbrushed it to add some different colours & depth. Then I tried to be a little more controlled with my airbrush & add a red haze around the white ball, before painting on the red blot shot lines with a paintbrush. Next, I airbrushed a blue circle of fondant, just to stop it looking like one solid  block of colour.  I added a black pupil & two little white dots to show some reflection in the eye. The final touch was to slop on some jam mixed with red food dye, to add a bit of a disgusting touch to it!!!!

I was really happy with how it looked & couldn’t wait for Mike to see it. Once everyone had arrived, we ushered Mike into the front room & sang happy birthday to him before he blew his candles out!!

Me presenting Mike with his cake!

Me presenting Mike with his cake!

I felt my gruesome cake fitted in with the great array of Halloween costumes!

I felt my gruesome cake fitted in with the great array of Halloween costumes!