Squidbillies Cake

I made my most recent character cake for my fantasy football league live draft this past weekend. I realize that "squidbillies" has absolutely nothing to do with fantasy football but I wanted to do something randomly funny and "Early Cuyler," the patriarch of the hillbilly squid family, was a natural choice.

In honor of Early's strong preference to "get wild on party liquor," the devil's food cake was soaked in a subtle kahlua syrup and was filled with a kahlua-chocolate buttercream.

The carving and icing of the body and tentacles were the most difficult processes of the cake construction. The tentacles were carved down from 2 layers of 10" round cakes and the squid body consists of 2 layers of 6" round cakes. After all the carving, a crumb coat of icing was necessary to get a smoother finish for the squid.

If you watch the show, you know that Early's crudely hillarious trucker hats are part of his simple, Southern charm. I piped our league name (foregone conclusion) on his hat (spelled terribly wrong of course). The hat consists of 2 layers of 6" round cake (the top layer wasn't leveled) and is covered in white and blue fondant. Because the cake was so tall, the hat sits on a separate 6" cardboard round so that it could be removed from the body and cut separately. The bill of the hat is just a thin piece of blue foam sandwiched between the hat and the body.

The cake was delicious and a huge success at the fantasy league draft. "God Bless America!"