I Wish I Were

There's something special in the juxtaposition of the devil making snow angels, but what do we see if we zoom out a bit? Devil Shimala has created his own little paradise where he can escape from the whip-snapping and screaming of tortured souls; a little bit of heaven after a million steps up from the deepest levels of hell (which is always sad to see him go).

After multiple designs were scrapped, this was chosen as the most feasible. Nobody will be surprised that Devil's Food Cake was used for hell, while chocolate pound cake was chosen for the upper level. First came an aluminum tube for support. Hell was sculpted from four devil's food cakes, and the tube inserted. I learned a lot of new techniques and even made up a couple on this cake. After sculpting, hell was frosted with purple buttercream and wrapped in a thin dough of cornstarch, corn syrup and ground cookies. This was left to dry and crack naturally overnight, giving a suitably hellish texture. The stairway was done with thin wafer crackers and bittersweet modeling chocolate riding a chocolate-dipped aluminum wire. Modeling chocolate was also used in areas too thin to be built-up with cake. The devil was sculpted and molded with food-safe silicone to be cast in sugar. He lays on a bed of fondant and ground sugar snow, above icicles of pulled sugar. His snowy plane drips with stalactites of tempered chocolate and ground oreo dirt. As my first "fancy" cake, and with all the techniques I struggled to master, this took roughly three full days. I may never make it in a pro cake shop, but at least I had a good time!

In the end, the cake tasted great, the fondant tasted like fondant, and the devil tasted suspiciously sweet.