Et Tu, Crouton? (The Assassination of Caesar Dressing)

As a huge Classics geek and a lover of puns, I’ve been eying this design since the year I started entering Threadcakes (2010). But every year I’ve convinced myself it’s just too difficult: there’s too much detail, the faces are too hard, etc. Well this year I finally decided to go for it.

I started by cutting the figures out of rolled fondant, then lightly sculpting them, and painting on shadows and details with a mixture of food coloring and vodka. Let me tell you, there’s something awesome about making a bunch of murderous salad fixings that resemble angry old Italian men. I even remembered to work in a larger scale than usual this year, so I wouldn’t have to stress over all the miniscule details like I usually do.

Once I had all the figures and various pieces done (teeny tiny swords!), it was time to bake. Somehow my regular chocolate cake didn’t seem the right flavor, so instead I came up with a white chocolate-lemon pound cake, with white chocolate-lemon cream cheese frosting.

I covered the cake in fondant and painted on the columns in the background, blotting them with a paper towel as I worked to recreate the blurry, faded effect in the original design.

I let that dry overnight, and the next morning I started assembling the pieces on the cake, draping them with fondant togae (sorry, told you I was a Classics geek) as I worked. I was so excited to finally get to see everything together that I totally forgot to take photos of this part. Good thing I’d set up the video camera to capture the process!

Once everything was in place I painted on the remaining shadows and outlines, and dabbed on the melted white chocolate “blood”/salad dressing.

Working on murderous salad fixings for a week left me with a serious craving, so I celebrated the final product with my own Caesar salad. And then when the kids came home we celebrated again…with cake! (And a rather lengthy discussion of what the salad fixings were doing to that poor bottle of dressing…). Also, as I was cutting the cake, one of my five-year-olds repeatedly requested the piece with all the melted chocolate by chanting, "I want blood! I want blood!"

The only bad thing about working in such a bigger scale this year is having so much cake to eat—wait, did I say bad thing?

Anyway, I had a blast, and I’m glad I finally managed to find the courage to cakify this awesome design!