The Sailor and the Sea Serpent

I took a cake decorating class in June. Three days later I heard about the ThreadCakes contest and decided it was fate taking a hand. I picked a design I thought I could make exclusively using modeling chocolate; everything you see here is fondant-free. The striped background was made by sending sheets of chocolate through a pasta maker and then lining them up on a chocolate backing. The snake was tricky; took four tries at different techniques before I found one that had the right stripes and the ability to bend in a snakey way. The cake is a dense chewy pound cake from The Cake Bible. I'm not much of a baker and I have to say this cake proved it -- as cakes go it makes a good brick. No judgement implied on the recipe; when you use flour that's three years of date it tends to make a difference.

By the way, the cake decorating class was excellent. If you ever have the chance to take a class from Mike McCarey of Mike's Amazing Cakes you should definitely do it. If he can give me cake skillz, he can do it with anybody.