Have I ever told you that I don’t particularly love snakes? They slither and have no limbs. They don’t greet you at the door when you come home, offering you a ball to throw for them to fetch, their bodies shaking with excitement. No, snakes are cold, indifferent to hostile in temperament, and look like they should be slimy to the touch. And some of them can kill you.
Last week, your Fearless Cake Artist (me) had an order for a snake birthday cake for Wyatt, a six year old boy who thinks snakes are just the icing on the cake, I mean, the greatest thing ever. And he’s not just into any snake — he particularly likes cobras, especially spitting cobras. Yup, a snake that spits venom at its intended victim. A poison loogie. Could it get any more disgusting?
Seriously. Take a look at a real red spitting cobra at right. He looks mean. Is that an open venomous spit-launching tube in his mouth? I don’t want to get within 100 yards of that guy to find out. Do you?
The good news is that a cobra cake is an entirely different beast from a real cobra. You can eat a cobra cake. You can’t eat a real cobra (unless you’re Bear Grills, that guy from TV who gets dropped off in the back woods somewhere and has to make it out alive with no food or water or anything. He eats all sorts of disgusting stuff.)
This cobra cake was made from chocolate cake and vanilla bean buttercream frosting, and covered with fondant textured to look like scales. The sand he’s sitting in? Brown sugar. His teeth are made from marshmallows so they don’t hurt. The rest of what you see is fondant, hand colored and sculpted to be as scary as possible, just so I could give a bunch of six year olds a thrill.
According to Wyatt’s mom, the cake was a big hit with the Wyatt and his pals! She wrote to me after the party:
“Thanks for the awesome cake! The kids loved it, although there was a major squabble over who got to eat the tongue. The birthday boy ultimately got to the tongue and teeth. The cobra’s head now looks like a toothless old man ;-)”.
You never know what will make a six year old happy. I’m glad I was able to help Wyatt achieve total domination over the deadly red spitting cobra. Happy Birthday, Wyatt, and many more to come!