Tarantula Cake: Why Hello there, Son of Aragog. Or Shelob. Whichever.

Behold! The fearsome and dangerous tarantula… cake.

Okay, so maybe it’s not so fearsome or dangerous unless you’re afraid of chocolate cake in the shape of an arachnid, or learning how to make one, but still - behold!

I made this cake for my best friend and boyfriend, to celebrate them getting jobs. I’m not entirely too sure how a tarantula was appropriate, but I don’t think they minded too much. I mean, it’s free chocolate cake… in the shape of a tarantula. And, to my surprise, it wasn’t just them who liked it.

My neighbor, across the street, the same woman I made the purse cake for, has a daughter. She, after one look at the cake, declared it adorable, named it “Tarantuly” (Despite the fact that it was named Aragog II by my brother and I, and named Bob by my best friend.), and said that she wanted one just like it for her birthday… which is themed “Shopping in Paris.” I’m not entirely sure how they fit together. At all. There were suggestions of a giant tarantula climbing the Eiffel Tower, though. That will probably not be happening.

The first thing I thought of when I made it was Aragog, from Harry Potter. Or Shelob from Lord of the rings, although, granted, I think she was just a spider, not a tarantula. And, only later did a friend suggest that I should have made a mini-Frodo to go with the cake. It would have been so cool! Argh. Well, maybe next time.

It also reminded me of Eight Legged Freaks, the one spider horror movie I have seen. And, after googling that, I found that there actually was a movie made called Tarantula. Tag line? Science’s Deadliest Accident. I think The Kitchen’s Deadliest Accident is more appropriate here. I mean, if we’re talking about going into a food coma from eating the entire modeling chocolate covered creme de cassis spiked chocolate cake.

What was that? Yes, you did hear me right. The cake has creme de cassis in it, meaning it’s alcoholic. Pshaw! Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better. Did I also mention that the cake is COMPLETELY edible? As in even the legs. I don’t like using non-edible components in my cakes, even though wire and Styrofoam are kind of stapes in professional bakeries where they do this sort of thing, not to mention PVC pipe, so the legs are made out of modelling chocolate wrapped around hard candy sticks. Uh huh. More sugar = more better.

And, now, without further babbling… Let’s make this thing.

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You’re going to need to start this project the day before.

First, make two batches of the modelling chocolate found here. It’s the only recipe I’ve found that actual works for me. And, if you can find it, use this stuff.

I don’t know what they do to the chocolate, but I do know that it’s just so easy to work with. I lub it. I lurve it. I love it. Right… Moving on. Make two batches of the stuff

And there we go. Done. Now, let it sit over night. Time to make the cake.
I used this recipe, which I sort of decided that I had to make because it called for creme de cassis, and the liqueur is one of the few that Hercule Poirot, Belgian (not French!) detective extraordinaire drinks.

So, to - I’m sorry, what? You don’t know who I’m talking about?

O_O

Stop making me sad. Go to the library and get a book by Agatha Christie, one of the ones where Poirot is the main character. Or, if you don’t want to read, go on Netflix and watch the television series. Go ahead, watch some of it while the cake is baking. The not knowing of Poirot is must be rectified.

The recipe was just enough to pour into two 6-inch cake pans, a five-inch, and a four-inch. Of course, if those size cake pans aren’t available, you can just use what you have and cut it to size. The times on the cakes will vary a bit from the real recipe, since the cakes themselves are smaller. Let them cool, unmold, and wrap in plastic wrap to use the next day.

Day 2

First things first. Make the chocolate ganache. I opted for a ganache instead of the usual Italian meringue buttercream I use because I wanted something more stable. Although, in hindsight, I think the buttercream would have worked perfectly well.
Now, onto the carving.

Cut off the tops of one of the six-inch and the five-inch cakes so that they’re level, and then stack the six-inch on the six-inch and the four-inch on the five-inch. The stack of six-inch cakes will be the body of the tarantula, and the smaller stack the head.

After pushing the smallest cake to the side so that one of the sides align, cut a slightly curved piece off of the smaller stack of cakes so that it will fit closely with the six-inch stack. Using a reference picture, cut the body of the spider to the right shape. It’s going to vary depending what sort you decide to make. Mine had an oval body, so I cut an oval.

This is when you’re going to need to cut the head shape as well. Just try to approximate whatever your reference picture looks like. And, please, don’t try and do this without one. I mean, unless you’re already an expert on tarantulas or something.

As you can see in the picture, I didn’t remove the piece of parchment paper that I used to line the cake pan with when I baked the cake. I do this because I’ve had difficulty in the past where the cakes actually stuck to each other before I even put any icing and ripped when I tried to separate them. I’ll remove it later, after the final carving. So, after you have the basic shape of the tarantula, you start rounding it, so make it look like the real thing. Try and get it really rounded on the bottom so that it doesn’t really even look like it’s lying flat on the table anymore. You do this by carefully cutting inwards towards the cake, and it should look something like the picture above when done.

Clean it up a little, and.. there. See? And now it’s time to assemble it!

What you’re looking at is just a piece of plywood that’s been covered with aluminum foil, making sure to cover the whole thing. And then I just took strips of parchment paper and laid them in a rough, overlapping, outline of the spider cake. This is so that that foil doesn’t get too messed up with frosting and crumbs.

Place the bottom layers of the cake on the board and smear a generous portion of the ganache frosting over it.

Place the top layers back on, making sure to line up the edges of the cakes.

Cover the rest of the cake in the frosting, trying to get it as smooth as possible. Then, put the whole thing in the fridge.

While the cake is chilling, roll out the modelling chocolate, making sure it’s big enough. I covered the cake in two sections, the head and the body, to make things easier.

The great thing about modelling chocolate, besides the taste and flexibility of the material, is the you can blend joins quite nicely. Try and smooth down  the modelling chocolate to make it as, well, smooth as possible. There’s going to be some folds towards the lower part of the cake. Just smooth these out with your fingers and then cut off the excess chocolate. I know the picture about doesn’t look too pretty, but it’ll get better. Or worse, depending on how you feel about tarantulas.

Now it’s time to build the legs. For the bones of them, I used hard candy sticks, broken into pieces, using a serrated knife. Looking at your reference pictures, break/cut the sticks into as many pieces of whatever length you need to be proportional to the body of your spider.

Stick together the pieces (I used five of them for each leg) with balls of modelling chocolate and then smear it over the joins, arranging it in the shape that matches, once again, your reference picture.

Then, after rolling out a piece of the modelling chocolate, cover the candy sticks with it. My tarantula had overlapping pieces that stuck out at the joins, so I just made them by pinching and smearing it. Now, stick it in the freezer briefly to solidify it. After it’s hard, take a large ball of modelling chocolate and attach it to the body of the cake firmly and securely. It doesn’t matter if it looks a little messy. The main point of this is just to get the leg securely attached.

Once they’re attached, the legs will look like this. And.. I sort of skipped photographing a few steps because I got distracted, but the small leg-looking like things in the front, that I think is to help it feed?, I made out of pure modelling chocolate, and the same with the fangs in front, which are those thick things that look vaguely like two teeth. I also added a rope of the chocolate over those, and a piece that I smeared on the top of the head. All of these will depend on what type of tarantula/spider chosen to make.

Here’s a close up. Then, I smoothed down the piece I added on top of his head, so that it was a triangular, faintly raised area.

Poke indents in the modelling chocolate and then roll small balls to place into the holes. Make they they stick out and are slightly protuberant. And, just like legs, they have eight eyes, although, apparently, their eyesight is pretty bad. Weird.

Take a paring knife and draw it across the modelling chocolate legs, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and… I think you get the point. Do it all over the legs, making sure not to cut too deep, to make it look like the legs are hairy.

For the body of the spider (not the head), I made much longer cuts, which give the impression of longer hair.

The hairs on the fangs I made an intermediate size, and the hair right above it I made really furry looking by twisting the knife slightly while I did it. Once again, try to copy how the hair is on your reference picture.

On the head, I made the hair short. Pay attention, too, to the grain of the hair.

When you’re done with this step, it should look roughly like this. Oh, and for the spinnerets, those things sticking off of its behind? I just rolled two slightly tapered pieces of modelling chocolate, pressed two indents all the way around each, to make them look segmented, and attached them.

Now, it’s time for a paint job. Melt some white chocolate (I used the white chocolate version of the chips I used for the modelling chocolate) and add food coloring until it’s the desired color. Then, using a paintbrush, paint it on the modelling chocolate.

After the orange coat cooled and hardened, I added a some white melted chocolate to the end of the leg segments.

For the long hairs on the body of the tarantula, I painted some white melted chocolate along the hairs and then quickly wiped it off, which left some of the white chocolate in the cuts I had made earlier, highlighting them.

Then… I cut hairs again where I had painted the cake with the melted chocolate to get the hair-like look again.

And this is what his face looks like. Truly, only a face a mother could love. I only did a thin coat of the orange /brown melted chocolate on the fangs. Oh! And don’t forget to do the eyes. I mixed black food coloring with melted chocolate and painted it on. To give him a gleam in his eye and make him look intelligent, I added a little white spot off to the side on each eye, like light was reflecting.
And… Believe it or now, it’s done. After all of that work, the finished product looks like this.

It’s getting closer…

*Cue overly dramatic and feminine terrified scream made adorable by anime*

Kyyyyyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

And there you have it, a completely edible tarantula. I mean, not to say that tarantula’s aren’t edible, because I know people eat them, but… I think mine might taste better. Maybe?

Aaaaanyway, I hope anyone who actually reads this liked the tutorial on how to make a tarantula cake that looks like it should be fighting Godzilla, and, if anyone decides to make one, please, PLEASE, for the sake of all that is sacred (like cake and cookies and anime) post a picture and let me know. So, yeah, if you liked it, let me know, and now… I’m off to make doughnuts.