Zoe's 4th grade class wrapped up their year with an Egyptian party. After all the testing was done for the year, her teacher taught a whole lesson on ancient Egypt. All the kids were completely fascinated by their customs. They did a program for the parents in which they acted out a very informative news broadcast from ancient Egypt, sang a cool song with costumes on, and had stations set up around the room to teach us about the mummies, clothing and even had some replicas of games the Egyptians played.
The teacher had asked me a couple of weeks before if I would make some kind of Egyptian themed cake. She said in years past, they had a pyramid cake and mummy cupcakes. Of course, she was trying to give an idea of what she wanted me to make but I heard a challenge being issued! In my crazy mind, I am conjuring up an exact replica of the Sphinx or a motion activated sarcophagus with a lid that opens as the kids come near it to reveal the life size mummy cake inside. I'm sure it would have involved some dry ice, smoke and mirrors! But then I was able to reel myself back into reality. This was the last week of school with a million things to do and I also have to take care of my kids...and sleep. So I decided to do a plain old sarcophagus cake. Boring, right.
I used the White Almond Sour Cream Cake recipe but when I'm making a cake for people outside my family, I always leave out the almond flavoring because of possible peanut allergies. I had planned on only doing two layers of the cake but once I had those two layers together, it looked kind of puny. But I was out of sour cream so I used plain Greek yogurt instead. This layer turned out way fluffier and more moist. Next time I will use Greek yogurt for all of it!
I baked them all in my 12 x 18 pan, used my home made even cake baking strips. I had enlarged and printed out an outline of a sarcophagus I found online earlier. I printed it out as poster size so it came out on four different sheets. This was great so I could decide how big I wanted the cake to be by just taping the top and bottom pieces together and adjusting the width as needed. Then I just used the paper as my guide to cut the shape of the cake.
I used the extra pieces of cake to form the face.
Once I had the shape all figured out, I made my fondant and got the color just right. I used this marshmallow fondant recipe and Wilton Buttercup yellow icing color. I rolled out the fondant and got it on the cake. To paint the stripes and face on the fondant, I used black food coloring with thinned out with (DON'T FREAK OUT) vodka. This is a common technique used to paint on cakes. As the paint dries the alcohol evaporates so it is completely safe. Some people use almond, orange or other extract but it leaves a flavor behind. Others use water but it takes forever to dry.
Now, by this time, I had been working on this cake all day, I hadn't eaten anything, and I was exhausted so when Zoe asked if she could decorate the cake, this tired control freak gave in. It was for her class, after all, and she wanted to be able to say she decorated it. I did my best to get the stripes and face on the cake and then I let her at it. She said she put my name and her name in hieroglyphics down the front and I will take her word for it!
Look at this spread! All the parents did a great job sending food and supplies in for the party!
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