The Snake Cake

I keep thinking about a quote that includes the phrase "paved with good intentions".  You know the one. 

My intention here was to somehow top last year's cake for Brian. 

That one's pretty good, isn't it?  It was realistic enough to trick the nearly 2yr old.  Brian loves reptiles.  He loved his iguana cake.  Too bad it only lived about 2 hours.  

So this year, Brian turned 8 and got a snake.  Skooch the snake is a western hognose, 12 years old, very docile, and used to belong to my sister-in-law.  He is also likely the only snake in the world that my mother will tolerate.  

I wanted to make Brian a snake cake.  I did a Google search (which is where I found the idea for the iguana, but I think I improved on it).  This is what I found:

Oh, if only!  What an amazing cake!  (Made by a bakery in the UK called North Star)  I knew I needed to settle for something a little less challenging.  I came across an idea of using a bundt cake and cutting it in half to make a snake.  It's not as awesome as North Star's Amelanistic Burmese Python, but it's actually achievable for me.  Well, that's at least what I thought. 

Here's the bundt pan. 

Bundt pan.  Sorry, my camera batteries are dead, so you and I are stuck with pictures ala Blackberry. 

I made two of these.  (It took until 11pm - WAY after my bedtime.)

It was pretty obviously NOT going to fit on my little cookie sheet, so I took a shelf from a broken-down bookshelf and covered it with foil, making a very sturdy, very heavy cake board. 

Voila!  Beautiful! 
Next, I put the cake together.  I cut each circular bundt cake in half and linked the semi circles together in an "S" pattern. 
The real challenge here was getting it from a simple "S" into the shape of an actual snake.  In this case, I decided to use our very own Western Hognose as a model.  I carved a taper into the tail and carved out the head, complete with cute little upturned nose. 

In case you're wondering, the head is on the left, and the tail on the right. 

As you can see above, the shape is cute, but then frosting it was a beast.  The crumby carved areas were SO hard to get covered without them falling apart.  Even just the fluted shape of the bundt cakes was pretty beastly to get around. 
I'd like to say that the snake turned out better than what you see above, but it really didn't improve a whole lot.  I finished frosting it, gave him brown M&M eyes, and drew a little mouth on with what i thought was red writing icing, but which turned out to be red gel coloring.  Oy veh! 
Apparently I didn't take a picture of the "finished product", but here's the idea of what I did. 

A friend of mine suggested tonight (way too late for me, of course) that I should have given him his "scales" in M&Ms and a red licorice tongue.  Yes, that would have been awesome, but I was short both the idea and the candies.  Would have been great. 

Again, it's a far cry from North Star, but it's the best I could come up with. 
Happy Birthday, Brian!