Taco Time!

This is my most recent cake that I made for my husband's birthday. I had to think of something he really loves, ( besides me, haha) and I had an epiphany. A taco cake! My husband loves ground beef tacos with the premade shells. I always try to go above and beyond and do slow-cooked shredded beef tacos with freshly cooked corn tortillas and an assortment of gourmet toppings. He loves those too, but most of the time he prefers plain old what I call "white boy tacos", haha. So I have to give in sometimes and just make something simple.

 For the cake, I made an orange marshmallow fondant. I have never made it before, but it turned out pretty good. I just googled the recipe. I made two chocolate cakes from scratch, cut them in half and coated the inside and outside with frosting. Oh and I incorporated a few cake crumbs into the fondant to make it look more like a corn tortilla. I also took some of the leftover cake after leveling them with my handy bread knife, crumbled it and toasted it lightly. I used that for the "ground beef:" on top of the frosting. The lettuce was made from dyed toasted coconut. I used a few drops of green and a few yellow to make it look more like iceberg and not so dark. After dying the coconut, it was really wet and sort of slimy. So i put it in my toaster oven on about 200 degrees until it was dry, about 20 minutes or so. The cheese and tomatoes were made from orange and red starburst. Try the "fruit punch" ( I believe) starburst for the tomatoes. The cherry ones were more pink than red like I wanted. The sour cream was white frosting, and to top it off was some raspberry puree to look like taco sauce. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of how it looked when I first made it and it was perfect. I decided to cover the cakes with my largest baking bowl so my husband wouldn't see his birthday surprise in the fridge. Huge mistake! The frosting stuck to the top of the bowl and sort of mixed everything together that I had worked so hard to put together so carefully. But oh well, you live and you learn, right? But other than that, I think it turned out pretty good. Some guests couldn't even believe it was actually a cake! So have fun and maybe you can try this cake one day for a loved one. Let me know if you have questions, thanks!