Decorated cake

My oldest daughter, Merissa, has a boyfriend named Nick.  They've been together for 5 years or so and bought a house together.  They also love this cartoon called "Invader Zim" (personally I have never watched this show) and one of the characters is named "Gir", as in Grrrrr.  They named one of their dogs Gir (but I call it "bug-eyed rat!)  So for Nick's birthday she asked me to make him a cake, she said she had asked this other person who works with fondant to make it but she felt she would rather have taste over appearance.  Ummm, I suppose there's a compliment in there somewhere.  Anyway, she wanted it to be a Gir cake of some sort.

Would you believe she wanted to come over that day to 'help' me?  Puh-lease!  I asked her, 'if you ordered a cake from a bakery would you go there to 'help' them?'  Anyway, I looked at images online to see something I thought would be good to make.  My youngest son, Tyler, gave me some pointers on what was characteristic Invader Zim images.

This was the image I used as a guide.

I also planned on using fondant and creating a 3D form of Gir.
This is melting the marshmallows for the marshmallow/rice krispie treats. 

Avery sifting the flour for the cake.

I couldn't use regular cake pans because I wanted to cut the cake out in the
shape of the house, so I poured the batter into my cookie sheets.
I have learned I need cookie sheets specifically for cakes.  They really
do warp!  Thank goodness I planned on cutting the edges off anyway!!!  

This picture was when I remembered I needed to take pictures of what I'm doing!!
This was four layers.  I cut each of the sheet cakes in half, then layered them on
top with peanut butter icing in between each layer.  Because you can't color
peanut butter icing properly I also made regular buttercream icing.
I crumb coated the cake before putting the final layer of icing on.
The pipes or whatever it is that's coming out either side of the house
were pieces of cake, then crumb iced and attached to the house with more buttercream.

This is Gir.  Rice Krispie treats covered in fondant.  The eyeballs
(which look like boobs to me) were small balls of the rice krispie treats, as
well as the arms.  I used toothpicks to stick these pieces into the larger piece.
The arms are resting onto of  the color bottles waiting for the icing
to dry.  These were removed at my daughter's house.

Top view before it was finished.

At their home.

 I didn't have cake boards the size that I needed.  So I cut a couple pieces of cardboard and wrapped them in aluminum foil.  If someone was purchasing the cake I would not have done it this way.  But because she wasn't paying me anything, well....I can be cheap on some things.

I also didn't want to ruin the look of the cake by writing Happy Birthday Nick on top of it.  So I chose to write it on the board.  The miniature cupcakes are one of Gir's favorite treates (the character, not the dog).  Merissa also told be that Gir liked Tacos, but by this time I didn't care.  Mini-cupcakes were easier!!

I had fondant that I bought from a private business.  It really was bad.  Crumbled, stiff, difficult to work with.  I had my husband run to JoAnn's and get me some fondant there - SOOOOO much better to work with.  One day I'll make it myself and see how that works.  For right now though, this was good enough.

Needless to say, they loved it.  I believe they were impressed by the cake.  I wonder, do you suppose she got taste AND LOOKS?