What-A-Cake!!!

The birthday went really well. The cake was done a little bit a head of time, so that made things so much better. Here are some pics of the finished tree:

I made modeling chocolate out of chocolate chips and corn syrup, then molded it around a wire and wood frame I made earlier. The wood grain of the tree was made just by scraping a tooth pick in various patterns, and to make the 'bark' of the tree a bit deeper and glossy, I mixed some brown food dye paste and water and painted it on, add a hand ties noose, and then ta-duh I have a chocolate tree!!
On the trunk of the tree I carved "Z (heart) MOM" awww . . . .

It turned out really well. I had to make a base so the tree could stand so I found a piece of metal vent at home depot, some plastic tubing, and some epoxy.

As for the rest of the cake, well I made chocolate cake, and half of the cake with filled with chocolate mint mouse and the other half was a tart cherry filling.

The cakes were baked on a cookie sheet so they were a lot thinner than normal layer cakes, but that allowed me to make 4 layers and thus making the cake extra moist.

The cake was topped with plain vanilla whipped cream frosting (tinted to be grey, but later seemed to turn a weird purple-grey color). Tombstones were made from marshmallow fondant and later painted with black dye paste diluted with water (which also turned the same strange grey-purple color, at least it matched).

Dirt was made from finely ground chocolate graham crackers, brown sugar, and coco powder.

Blood was made from strawberry pie filling tinted darker with a bit of black dye and red dye.

Lastly, the bone (except for the whole body) were formed from fondant.

It was a lot of work, but the end product was really nice, and tasted amazing.