The Crayfish Crush

I made this cake slowly over a weekend. The dots, banner, flowers, and topper are made of gumpaste and/or fondant. The cake is a super amazing first time recipe for me called: mud cake. Then I focused on making an equally amazing Italian meringue buttercream- who doesn't like playing with molten sugar? I added in some melted chocolate, and a coffee reduction (thats right super concentrated coffee!). From there it was just trying to throw it all together, and making it pretty. Really, if you haven't tried mud cake do- once I took that first bite, I wasn't quite sure what all the fuss was about to make a pretty cake!

Made for my husband who is my mutually weird someone. The banner reads "Mutually Weird Forever" based on a quote of Robert Fulghum and how true love is finding someone who is satisfyingly mutually weird like our little crayfish and his Swiss Army knife. Added a little detail of our first initials in place of the logo on the knife.

Toppers were all cut by hand from hand-drawn templates. No molds were used, no tracing :)