A Very Zombie Xmas

I had a great time with my family over Christmas this year. It's myself and my fiance, my younger brother and his girlfriend, and my parents, all living at my parents' house right now... With Brandon and I saving up for our wedding and going to school, and Bryan, my younger brother, finishing up school, my parents have been entirely too gracious, letting us live there. So we have a full house, plus my older brother Paul and his wife, Jesi, were able to come over as well. I made pop-up pancakes (pancakes put in muffin pans for single-serve deliciousness), quiche -one sausage, one bacon- fried potatoes, and juice... I've gotta say, it was incredibly awesome.

My point of all this mouth-watering talk, is that after breakfast, we had a little birthday celebration for Paul. His birthday's on Christmas Eve, so we always try to separate the two holidays. I made him a cake this year, since he was coming over to the house.

Paul loves zombie movies. Well, in general, Paul loves zombies. When I first started thinking of what I wanted to do for him, I went through several ideas... I knew I wanted to do something either music or movie related. I chose movies, and then I had it narrowed down to Pulp Fiction or zombies. Zombies won out.

I scoured the internet looking for inspiration... I found some really really great cupcakes on flickr that I fell in love with... So I bought some of my own chocolate molds and modeled my cupcakes after those. The actual cake was a bit more difficult. I couldn't find anything I really liked, so I had to come up with my own design. I created a decapitated zombie cake, with worms and eyeballs and rotted teeth... And of course lots of blood and brains.

The cake was red velvet cake, covered in cream cheese frosting, then covered in fondant. Airbrushed to look dead-ish.. I made the eyeballs out of fondant and painted them with my airbrush color... They set out overnight so they'd harden a little. The only part that was inedible on the cake was the teeth-- they were just a cheap pair of rotting teeth like you'd get at a halloween shop or something.

I wish I'd remembered to take pictures of the actual process, but I was so busy trying to get it done (what with all the other pre-holiday festivities and baking going on-- it WAS Xmas Eve, after all!) I totally forgot until the very end.

Enough blabbing, I suppose. Here's the final product-- Decapitated Zombie Head, with Brains Cupcakes:

(After all, nothing says Merry Christmas like a decapitated zombie.)


Paul's zombie head cake:



Brains Cupcakes.... With a *hint* of eyeball. :-) :



Group shot of cupcakes and cake: