A is for Jerks!

Threadcakes sort of snuck up on me this year. I have a more grand plan for a cake, but for some reason haven’t been able to get psyched for any serious cake work. Maybe the inspiration will hit. But how could I NOT enter? My kids have been bugging me to make them this alligator cake for a while. I figured if I could find a shirt with an alligator on it and with the motivation of promising little kids a cake, we’d be set. :)

Of course, things didn’t go smoothly. First off, I had a lot of “help” from the kiddos which distracted me enough that my picture taking was definitely subpar- especially during the baking process. Secondly, I made the mistake of having much too moist of a cake for sculpting. Crumbs everywhere. Enough said. I made not quite enough frosting, but didn’t want to make more and try and match the green.

First, we mixed our homemade cake. We baked it in a bundt pan in the oven, pretty standard. After it cooled, we put it in the freezer and left it overnight. The next day I chopped it up so it relatively resembled the picture we had seen. We made some buttercream frosting and started gluing it together. I crumb-coated everything, managed to still not capture all the crumbs, and put it in the fridge for a bit. Then we added the final layer of not-quite-enough frosting and decorated. Voila! Alligator cake!

Making the homemade cake was definitely worth it in the taste department, especially the buttercream frosting. Plus, the frosting turned out an excellent green. We had a lot of fun decorating him with M&M’s (even though some of our M’s are showing), yogurt-covered pretzels, Mike and Ike-s, and cut-up lime fruit slices. After we decided that his legs were just “dirty,” all was well. We had fun. And, in spite of its shortcomings, the alligator was a very delicious and moist chocolate cake.