Cheeseburger Cake...Not So Cheeseburger Cake

Current Mood: Wishful (I need to be outside on this beautiful day!)
Current Song: Ed Sheeran-Lego House

Soooooo Meg and I were going to make a Mario out of cupcakes for Dom for his 29th birthday since he is OBSESSED and it was pixelated which matches his tattoo on his arm. We had this planned for a long time and at the last minute, I decided to count the cupcakes to see how many we would need. Ummmm yeah...it was 143. Dom was having a 10 person dinner party for his birthday.

That was a definite no go.

From 10:30 to about 12:00 on Saturday, we sat there trying to figure out what to make. We had major ADD and we were major off that morning (not sure if this had to do with going to Hard Yacht Friday night after the Orioles' opening day or not).

Dom loves food. Period. We decided to go with a cheeseburger cake!! Looking at pictures on Google was VERY misleading (or we just suck). We didn't even take pictures because it looked too sloppy :(

Bottom line. Meg and I probably shouldn't attempt to bake together anymore. Hehe.

This is what we did: We made a chocolate and a vanilla cake in two 9 inch round pans. The chocolate cake came out FANTASTIC! The whole cake was good just pretty sloppy looking. We cut the vanilla cake in half so we could make the two buns. The chocolate cake was obviously the burger patty. In between of each layer, we put vanilla butter cream icing. This was the real messed up part that disappointed me very much. We didn't think to check on how much butter Dom had in his fridge and Meg had already gone out once to get a bag of powdered sugar for the icing. We decided to use margarine. WORST IDEA EVER!! DON'T DO THIS!! It's called butter cream for a reason! It ended up tasting like store-bought nasty @$$ Betty Crocker icing in a can. GROSS! Had to add some extra vanilla extract to make it taste decent.

Anyways...then we went out a second time to grab some fondant. I HIGHLY recommend using Satin Ice fondant. It is soft, doesn't dry out too too easily, and actually tastes good! We used icing color to knead in some red for tomatoes and yellow for cheese.

Important Note: Use gloves!! We had dye all over our hands :(

We stuck "tomatoes" and corners of "cheese" in between the top "bun" and "burger" and piped green icing in around the bottom bun layer to look like lettuce. We added some copper icing to the top of the cake, sprinkled real sesame seeds and VOILA! We had ourselves a lop-sided cheeseburger cake!

Meg rushed off to work and Dom walked in 2 hours later knowing EXACTLY what it was. He made a good point: When have you ever seen a perfect looking cheeseburger?!

Sorry...no pictures to provide as Meg forbid me.

We used this chocolate cake recipe--it was delicious! Used hazelnut coffee grounds instead of espresso powder. YUM! It is indeed the best chocolate cake recipe ever.

Cheers!