Hulk in the City

My nephew, Matthew, was having a Hulk birthday party (Hulk is every 3-year-old’s hero because he is allowed to smash things) so I made him a hulk cake!

My favourite part is the comic panels around the cake. I spent quite a bit of time planning out the panes and how they would fit together. I made them from white gum paste and hand painted them using watered-down black food colouring. This made me love painting on cakes! You can water the black down to the point that it is very light grey and then it’s like drawing with a light pencil – very easy to “erase” with a bit of water on paper towel. I sketched everything out first and then got bolder with the black, and finished with more shades of grey for shading. Once the painting was done I dried the pieces on the cake pan so they would be the right shape when it was time to attach to the cake.

My next favourite part was the cake itself. Matthew wanted chocolate cake … but the Hulk had a little accident in the cake factory and some magic Hulk blood got in there (come on, you saw the Edward Norton Hulk right? Hulk blood in the soda?). I used green food colouring in some of the batter and then used a zebra technique to mix the hulk and chocolate batters together.

Next comes the cookies! I made sugar cookies cut out in star and building shapes. The stars I sandwiched onto skewers with icing.

Now for the Hulk. I really tried, but yes, he has moobs. I tried to make a little Matthew wearing a Hulk mask … its fairly cute but if you look at the picture of him without the mask he looks like a creepy old man. The adults had their fun making fun of them.

Biggest lesson learned: never ask a 3-year-old to “pretend” to bite a cake for a photo – they don’t know how to pretend!