For David's 5th birthday, he asked me to make his cake! I was quite flattered and told him SURE I would make his Spider man cake (Venom in particular), and got to work, thinking about the design. Then his mom, my sister Kathleen, sent me a few pictures he pulled off the internet on awesome spidey cakes! But yikes, they were all really complicated, involved, challenging, hard.
The one he REALLY wanted was a 3 layer cake, all different colors..with fondant buildings all along the side to make it look like the city, plus a red spider web on the top. Then he also wanted a Spider Man and a Venom toy (both of which were hard to find at that time, but which became our "present" to him) and they were supposed to be shooting a web from the top layer, PLUS chocolate candy webs. At first I thought "wow" there's no way I can do that, but had enough time to contemplate my options, and decided to tackle it. That little guy is just the best, and so worth every drop of energy that went into it .
I had to make 3 graduated layers, using my round wedding cake pans, with the smallest one on the top. I filled the top layer short so it wouldn't be that thick, and used black gel icing to create the web on it after frosting it red. I decided to use my cake plate dividers, knowing I would probably lose some aesthetics and it might look a little more lopsided, but felt it was worth it to have the ease of actually removing the top 2 layers to cut and eat, than it would be to slice through two or 3 layers (neatly) of different sizes, and the weight of both layers might affect how lopsided it was anyway.
To decorate, I used ready made fondant and black markers to serve as the buildings on the side, and the edible markers to draw the windows. It was tedious but it came out pretty good...as long as it stayed in my fridge.
I pulled out the chocolate melts and using a small bottle with a cap (candy makers bottle) put the melted chocolate in the bottle (actually melted the chocolate in the bottle) and drizzled thick strands of chocolate in the shape of partial webs on wax paper and let them sit for a couple of hours before removing them to insert in the top of the cake, vertically. I made a few extra just in case I broke them (and one or two did) and again assembled them at the party location. Turned out rather good, all things considered. Yay.
The daunting task was like the time I tried it before--transporting such a delicate cake, to an offsite location and to be stored outdoors in the heat of the day, until cake time. This time I froze the layers so I could transport them and then assemble them when we arrived. That worked much better and our shady spot helped keep it from melting.
I had to make a dozen or so cupcakes too to match, just so the little ones would have something easy to grab. Found the candy spider man topping pieces at the local craft store. The only heretofore unmentioned challenge, was, like all darker colors, getting the icing tint to go dark enough. Fortunately, I just used a lot and the colors deepened nicely. Happy Birthday David.
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