Amazing Birthday Cake for Gavin!

So it's been a while! Hi! I've taken about 3 months off from blogging, but I have been busy with cakes, so I will get this up to date as soon as I can. Apologies, I have no real excuse, I have just been busy with Christmas and New Year and then distracted playing with my Christmas Gifts!

Gavin's Birthday was at the beginning of December, I have always avoided doing a Spider-Man cake because it's a bit of a go-to for him to have Spider-Man things and I wanted to be able to do it justice, I wanted to avoid a plain old run of the mill Spider-Man cake - they are so simple, you can buy them from the supermarkets. No, I wanted something a little outside the box that would be fit for a true fan. I chose the face of many Spider-Mans. These were my inspiration;

Spider-Man himself- for obvious reasons - enough said

The Scarlet Spider - a clone of Peter Parker in the Comics who becomes a stand in for our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man

Spider-Man 2099 - A version of  Spider-Man from the comics set in the future

Symbiote Spider-Man - Still our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man but wearing an alien life-form suit, which later became Venom in the comics

4 faces of Spider-Man to make up 4 sides of a cake, I thought it was a fun idea, they all had different spiders, colours and eyes, which would make the cake fairly interesting.

I made it two tier so that I had enough space to make the different faces, spiders and backgrounds. The tiers were made from a large chocolate cake on the bottom and a smaller mint chocolate cake on the top.

I started off by covering the bottom layer with red roll our icing

Once it was covered and smoothed out, I marked a cross on the cake - going through the centre, to gage where each segment would go. I rolled out and covered one quarter of it with black icing for the Symbiote Spider side of the cake.

I wanted the top tier to be a plainer colour so that the face stood out, I also wanted to bring in the Spider-Man perch effect, so I made the top tier into a something that looks like the top of an old building. So I covered the top tier in grey icing. 

I cut out the shape of a face and painted it black to ensure that I got the blackest colour I could get

Using white royal icing, I made eyes for the face of the Symbiote Spider and used the photo of the Marvel figurine to craft the spider to stick on him too, then the Symbiote Spider side was complete. One down - three to go.

I decided to do the most complicated Spider to basically get him over and done with - the Spider-Man 2099. I cut the face out of red icing and painted over it with blue colouring to match his face mask. I also painted the bottom layer to match the colouring on his chest. I then created the spider from his chest out of red royal icing - as it's a flying spider, it was a little tricky, but I got it after a couple of tries - two down - two to go

You can also see from the below picture, that I've added the black building swirls to the edges too.

Spider-Man himself needed to be next - with the patterning to do on his face and on the bottom layer cake, I needed to make sure that this was right without messing it up - as I was using an icing pen and drawing this freehand straight onto the cake. I made his face shape and eyes and drew the web patterns on

Happy that I managed to get that right, I then took the freehand drawing to the bottom layer cake to complete the patterning. Once that was finished, I made the black spider from his chest and Spider-Man side was done - three down - one to go

Scarlet Spider's face was fairly simple, the only slightly tricky thing was his eyes were different to the rest of them, I shaped them by hand quite a few times before I was happy that they were right. I painted the bottom layer to match the colouring on his chest and made the black spider out of royal icing - four Spider-man sides done!

All that was left was to write Happy Birthday Gavin on the top of the cake and it was ready for the glorious tea party that followed. 

Gavin absolutely loved it and I think he liked that I went in a slightly different direction with the cake than just a normal Spider-Man face, this is a cake for a Spider-Man fan - and that's my Gavin.

Total Time Spent: 6 Hours (I think - we are talking 2 and a half months ago)

Useful Tips Gained: Do not be scared to draw directly on the cake

Items to Purchase: More edible pens!

Items Added to Amazon Wishlist: More edible pens!

Miscellaneous Items Wished For: None.

Credits - Thanks to Gavin, who provided very useful information on the background of various Spider-Man characters mentioned above.