Spooky Spider

One of the coolest 11 year olds that I know, Matthew, had a spooky-themed birthday party. He didn't give me too many instructions for the cake. Only that he wanted it to be scary and it somehow had to involve a spider. Here is the finished product. I hope he likes it, or rather, he is spooked by it. Hopefully, pictures of the birthday boy will be posted soon.

I made the base of the cake from two 8-cm butter cakes, grey buttercream icing and I piped the spider web with black buttercream icing, using a no.3 nozzle. Originally I considered using fondant, but I really dislike making black fondant because it takes forever to make it a true black. Buttercream icing takes much less colouring to make it a nice dark black colour. I also made a 3-cm butter cake for the body of the spider. His body is black buttercream icing using a small leaf piping nozzle. I thought it gave it a hairy look. The legs are pipe cleaners. The head is a "cake ball," which is basically cake crumbs and icing. I made the eyes and fangs with fondant.