Spider-Man Birthday Cake (Tutorial)

For my Buddy's 3rd birthday recently, I made him this delicious, awesome Spider-man cake!  He loved it, and it was actually a lot simpler to decorate than other cakes I've attempted.  I admit that I'm just an amateur who dabbles in cake decorating.  So, anytime I find a super-cute, super-easy cake design, that's the one for me!

My son really wanted the cakes colored.  He still talks about the rainbow cake that I made for my Little Man's birthday a few months ago!  He wanted a rainbow cake, too, but I knew that he would love this superhero cake, so I told him I'd make the cakes red and blue--Spider-man colors!

Let's get decorating:

1.  First, I made two cakes mixes, one for each 9" layer.  (That way, my cakes turn out plenty thick, so that later I can level them for stacking and still have some cake left.)  Prepare the cakes mixes in separate bowls.

2.  Stir in blue food coloring gel in one bowl and red in another until you have nice colors. 

Unfortunately, I ran out of red and my top layer looked suspiciously like pink, but my son never noticed.

3.  Bake your cakes.  If you use one cake mix for each layer like I did, this will take longer than the box directions.  Just bake until a toothpick comes out clean.  After the cakes have cooled a little, remove them onto a wire rack to finish cooling.  After they're completely cool, use a cake leveller or a knife to level the tops of the cake so you can stack them.

After the first layer, put a thick layer of icing on top.  I used white because I guess I hadn't mixed my icing colors yet, but you could also use red.

4.  Use food coloring gel to make red and black icing.  (Warning:  you have to use a lot of dye to make true red and black colors that don't look pink or gray.)

Stack the second layer on top, and cover the entire cake with red icing.

5.  Load a piping bag with black icing.  Using a writing tip, draw a small circle in the middle of the cake.  I used a toothpick to lightly mark 10 lines equally spaced around the small circle.  Then pipe lines radiating out from the small circle, all the way down the sides of the cake.

6.  After you've drawn all 10 lines, connect them with arches to make it look like a spider-web.  I used two rings of arches on the top of the cake and one ring around the sides.  I also connected the lines in a ring around the top edge.

7.  Draw two large eyes with the writing tip.  I started mine just under the small circle in the center.  After drawing them and making sure I was happy that they matched, I filled them in using the writing tip.  After the icing dried, I just used my finger to smush the lines together a little bit.

8.  Fill a 2nd piping bag with white icing.  I made the top of of the eyes just like I did the black layer:  I drew it with the writing tip first, then filled it in.  After the icing dried, I smushed it a little so the lines weren't so obvious.

Finally, I piped black shells around the bottom edge. 

And that's how you impress your superhero-loving husband 3-year old!
-Lily

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