Surprise Cockroach Cake

A friend of mine approached me to create a super unique centerpiece cake design for her mom's surprise 60th birthday party.  Ashely explained she was looking for something funny and interesting for her insect, bug crawling, B-52 flying, cockroach loving mom!  Ashely was looking for something realistic, appealing (or should I say not appealing) and definitely not cute.

Originally we had discussed the idea of a sculpted 3-D cockroach cake but decided on this (more appetizing) arrangement.  Hehe.  Could you image cutting into a roach cake and seeing the cream filled center?  =P

We decided on this 2-tiered ivory textured buttercream cake with rows of lime green "grass" and a mixture of crushed Oreos, graham crackers and brown sugar "dirt".  We handmade all of the cockroaches from gumpaste and hand painted these little crawlers for added detailing.

For the flavor, Ashely chose our Yellow Butter Cake with Lilikoi Cream filling. The cake was delivered to the Waialae Country Club where the staff watched us put the final touches on the cake.  Needless to say, everyone was very surprised to see roaches being added to the cake!  We got lots of compliments on these B-52 bombers and we hope Ashley's mom loved it too!  Happy Birthday!!