Abs of Cakes: Crab Day for Ray

Happy September! Sadly, Summertime is slowly coming to a close...one thing my family and I took advantage of while the weather was warm and the sky was sunny was eating fresh crab at the Redondo Beach Pier. Our favorite spot to eat is Quality Seafood Inc. where you can choose the crab you want and they'll steam it fresh for you in approximately 30 minutes. We have our ritual of going early to get the best tables, then laying out our newspaper while our crab and fresh fish is being cooked for us. After all the yummy eats, we get ice cream, walk around the pier enjoying the fishermen and local beach-goers. It is by far one of my favorite things to do during the summer! My cousin Ray had a brilliant idea of celebrating his birthday by going to Redondo Beach and wanted me to make a "Crab Cake" for him. Of course I was all over this cake challenge!!

Meet Sanchez the Crab....that's what I named him because he's sportin' a 'stache :< so from here on out, that is what I will refer to him as...

Since I was only feeding about ten people, I knew this cake was going to be on the smaller side, however, I didn't want to make a cake that was ALL crab in fear that it might be too small. I did some research and liked the idea of Sanchez coming out of a steamer, but I wanted his whole body to show. I decided to make it look as if the steamer was turned upside down as if Sanchez "conquered" it, only to find out that Ray would be the one to "conquer" him when he cut into the cake to eat him....the big fish eating the little fish concept.

The steamer would be the cake, so that's where I started. Ray requested for a vanilla cake with strawberry filling.

While the cake was setting in the refrigerator, I worked on the modeling chocolate to cover Sanchez with. The color of crabs are not quite orange, and not quite red, but a color in between...red-orange if you will. So I mixed some orange and some red candy melts in order to get my desired crab color. I then added some light corn syrup to create the modeling chocolate which becomes an edible clay that I use for molding.

You have to give modeling chocolate time to set and harden for at least a couple hours, so as that was resting, I made some rice cereal treats to form Sanchez' body. I placed the sticky cereal treat onto some wax paper to help get the right shape.

I put the cereal treat body to the side so I could work on the steamer. I used two layers of fondant to cover the steamer to get the effect that it's hollow as you look through the holes. If I just used a white, it wouldn't look as realistic. I used black as the under layer so when I cut the holes on the top layer, the black would show through. The top layer was a darker gray with some luster dust added to give a little metallic shimmer. I then added a trim along the perimeter and some details for where the handle of the steamer would be.

After I finished up the holes of the steamer, I went back to Sanchez. I buttercreamed the rice cereal treat in order to cover it with the red-orange modeling chocolate. I molded Sanchez' claws and assembled him onto the steamer.