Everything Kristi!: Black Widow Cake

I made this black widow spider cake for Levi's birthday. He hasn't seen it yet and I think he's going to love it. He loves this sort of thing. I looked on line for a long time to find a picture of a black widow cake and I couldn't find one so I just made it up as I went along. She's upside down so you can see her red spot. I wanted her legs to be sticking up in the air but that didn't work out. Oh I almost forgot, I had no idea there were so many different kinds of black widow spiders and they aren't all black either, some are brown or white with stripes. Pretty cool! I decided to stick to what I'm familiar with.

I wanted the big back end to be up higher than the rest so I put most of the chocolate cake mix into the round cake pan.

Bake the cakes at 350º, the rectangle portion took 25 min. and the round took about 35 min.

While the cake cooked I mixed black food coloring with chocolate frosting.

I took quite a bit of black food coloring to get it all black.

After I had it black I decided to put the black licorice in the freezer so the legs would stick up the way I wanted them to. So, I folded them together to make them look like spider legs and put them in.

I sliced the edge off of the round cake to make it curved instead of straight. Then I started trimming the body and head.

I put the part I trimmed off underneath the round cake so it would be higher up in the middle to make it look more rounded and real.

After I had the body and head the shape I wanted I sliced some cake off the bottom so it would be even shorter.

The cake formed a pretty big crack down the center so I filled that with some trimmings too.

After I frosted the cake with the black frosting I took this ready to decorate icing and to make the red spot on her back.

I just basically made 2 triangles.

Then I took a popcicle stick and smoothed it out.

I used lemon heads for the eyes. Although I have no idea what color their eyes are, probably black.

Here are the frozen black licorice legs. They freeze really fast and they thaw really fast. So, they didn't work out like I planned. I wanted it to seem like the spider was on her back with her legs moving in the air trying to turn over. They still worked as legs but not exactly how I imagined. I wonder if they would have stayed frozen better if I had gotten them wet first. Hmmm, I'll have to try that in the morning and see what happens.