justJENN recipes

The Baby wanted a Godzilla cake for his birthday. So I thought, what if I took a Godzilla doll…but had him surrounded by a city of…cake? Genius! Well, not really, but I thought maybe all those years of building architectural models might be able to help me out. I am much more comfortable building buildings than large fire breathing monsters.

ingredients:
2 9×13 sheet cakes
buttercream frosting
chocolate fondant
white fondant
yellow gel dye
black gel dye
graham crackers (for sand if you want)
blue sprinkles (for water if you want)

First I laid out a plan. Every good designer has a plan right? Well I just thought it’d be easier to get a vision on how I wanted the height of things, and how I wanted it to look.

The Godzilla was fairly short so a three stack high cake turned out to be just what I was after. So I cut and stacked it according to the plan that I had laid out.

Once everything was cut and in place, I rolled out the fondant to the size that I could drape over the cake. Luckily my cakes were small, so it was easy to do with one package. I found chocolate fondant, which was great because it was almost as if it was pre-dyed but with flavor. I was also going for more of a ‘cartoon-y’ look for the cake, so I wanted the same color for all the buildings, knowing that they’d be detailed in different colors.

Right before I laid out the fondant, I quickly frosted the cake, not heavily, just as if I was doing a crumb coat, enough for stickage.

Then I covered the cake, smoothed it out and cut off any excess. I added little smoke stacks and turrets out of the same color fondant to give the roof a little more depth.

My goal was to just get this done quickly, so I dyed white fondant into just two colors, yellow and gray parts for the windows/details of the building.

Keep in mind, all of these buildings/cakes are not on my board yet. I am decorating them just sitting off on individual cutting boards for the moment. First I wanted to ready the site, I dyed fondant gray to lay out the paving for the street and laid that down. NOW you move your buildings onto their sites.

On the back side, I laid down some frosting, covered it with blue sprinkles for water, then a little bit of sand, which is just crushed up graham crackers. If I was feeling more ambitious I’d have built a bridge too, but let’s not get nuts.

And there you have it. A completed Godzilla cake. To which the Baby said, “YAY. WHEN DUZ HE SMASH IT ALL?” Uh…I realized that I had just built an architectural model. Not so much “Godzilla destroys the city” as “Godzilla goes out for a leisurely stroll to see the sights.” Too bad. I figured once the cake was eaten, then it’d look like there was some damage done. I just couldn’t bring myself to build a bad structural building.

In the end, the guests ate the cake and the Baby got his ’smashed’ city. I think Godzilla felt a bit of satisfaction too.

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