Gator Cake

Cake sculpting can be a scary business. Take off too much and your sculpture of Sponge Bob looks like a sponge blob. Take off too little and your characters look bulky and bloated. Sigh. What to do!?
The answer is simple: rice crispies. They’re not not just for elementary lunches any more. If they are packed densely, rice crispies can be sculpted into a variety of shapes. If you take off too much, you can add more cereal. If you need to remove more, the cereal can be compressed or carved to meet the requirements. Brilliant stuff and very forgiving. Tasty too.
The cake pictured here was for a “welcome back to college” party. The cake base was made of several sheet cakes laid side to side. I iced them with white and blue down the center. (Yes, this was one of my earlier cakes.)
The gator was the real star. He was made of rice crispies and covered in fondant. I painted him using the same method I described in the “(Winnie the) Pooh Cake”. He dried and cured for several days before I placed him on the cake base. Unfortunately I did not anticipate the fact that he would bend and flex when I picked him up and moved him. There were several cracks in his fondant skin. I was able to hide them with more food color, but in the future I would suggest adding a base structural support under your rice crispie constructions. They tend to sag. Tragedy.
I also decorated with gummie candies: fish, snakes, worms, and spiders. The whole effect was quite fun. The college kids ate the cake and the gator. Success.