The Uncanny Valley - Head Cake

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

This cake was my fun!

For years now, I've wanted to make a head cake, or a zombie cake; this year, I followed my dreams! My husband took one look at this and judged it! His response: It is horrid! Not in the bad way, but in the Uncanny Valley way.
The uncanny valley is a theory of robotics where things look so real that they are disturbing, rather than interesting.
Hubbie was disgusted, as were my coworkers!


I wanted originally to do a step-by-step, but I didn't. Sorry! Instead, I took a few photos, well, my husband did, and I can show you the parts.

I started out with three 6-inch cakes, stacked them in a slanty way, and began to carve them into the shape of a face.


Next, and this is where I could not take photos, I used my 'mastery' of sculpting (not really), and covered the cake in modeling chocolate. This is a sculpting part, I am sure you can buy face molds if you look hard enough, but if you want it to be personal, use your creativity, explore pictures of faces, then try to re-create your own design. I used bits and pieces to piece together the face (working on muscle groups etc), making it look dead, and a little upset about it.

LOOK! IT'S THE SAME SIZE AS MY FACE!

Finally, using cocoa powder, I brushed on some shade into the face. Then I used some luster dust (purple, pink and blue) to make cuts look like they are bruised. I scored the face with wonderful cuts, and added some corn syrup (dyed red and brown) to make it look like shiny blood.

LETS CUT 'ER OPEN!

This head looks a little upset about the whole thing.

There you have it! My head cake. I had a blast doing this. Modeling chocolate is so easy to work with, I'll post up a nice tutorial later on! But for tonight, scary movies and pizza.

Happy Halloween All!

I guess I SHOULD share my costume:

Victorian Lady, holding a head:


The costume dragged on the ground all day... I was amazed that only one kid tried to climb under the dress. Good thing I was wearing pants under it!