You either fiercely love Poe or don’t care for him at all. If you know someone who fits in the former category, here’s some gothic cake ideas for their birthday.
Known for his gothic and macabre themes, Edgar Allan Poe is a towering figure in the world of English literature. If you find yourself in the position of wanting to bake a cake for that raging Poe fan you know, this is the place to be. Think dark and moody, eerie and mysterious. Poe’s works have distinctly dark overtones. Death, despair, and a deepdive into the human psyche are some of the concepts Poe visits again and again in his works.
Imagine a dark night, whispers carried on quiet winds, the feeling that you’re being watched even though there’s no one in sight, as you walk up to a huge mansion on the side of the raging sea, no other person in sight as far as the eye can see. That’s the general mood you want to create through your cake. So pull out the fondant, a lot of black food coloring, and read on for different ideas of Poe-inspired cakes you can create.
One of the simplest cakes you can make is focusing on a line or quote from one of his works, that you know the birthday person likes. Bake a one or two-layer chocolate cake and add another layer of dark gray fondant on top. With fondant, create a mini raven, a grave, a rose and some other eerie motifs to sit on the edges of the cake. In the middle, with thin piping, write out the quote. If you’re not familiar with his work and find yourself stuck, here’s one of my favorites: “But we loved with a love that was more than love,” from his poem Annabel Lee.
If the birthday person has one favorite poem that you know about, you can create a cake highlighting it. Make a cake and cut it in the shape of an open book. Add fondant to build the shape and brush it with brown edible paint so it looks like an old and weathered book. On the open pages, with thin piping, write out a few verses from your chosen poem. Also, make sure the book looks old and used, with browning tattered edges and yellowing pages.
Design a cake in the shape of a stack of antique books,all with black covers, of course. On the spine of each, write out the name of one of Poe's famous works. Make sure to include the vastly famous one: The Raven, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell-Tale Heart. For the book on top, you’ll need to use edible images or hand paint an illustration as the cover. With black fondant, add details, like a pair of reading glasses and a raven perched on top.
With the surface of the cake, you want to create the feel of a moonlit night sky, which is reminiscent of the eerie ambiance of the poem. Do this by covering the cake with dark gray or bluish-black frosting. Add a bright hand-painted moon in one corner. Also hand-paint some bare trees on the sides. Add the word "Nevermore" written in elegant calligraphy, paying homage to Poe's famous poem The Raven. Surround the word with intricate black lace designs made on strips of gray fondant and raven feathers made with ready made molds.
A relatively simpler cake to make, this one contains an edible image of Poe himself. Cover the cake with fondant so you have an easy base to work with. Print the image onto the cake. If you’d prefer to hand paint the portrait, use edible ink and black-and-white food coloring. Fill the empty spaces around the portrait with fondant-made quills, ink bottles, vintage books and other literary elements to celebrate the great writer.
Another option is to focus on the settings of many of Poe’s works. He often recalls a gothic mansion and you can recreate one using fondant, adding wrought iron gates, arched windows and creeping vines all over its outer walls. Add mysterious shadows, black trees and eyes peeking out from one of the windows with no more context given for that. This is a relatively complicated cake to make so as you go about the process, keep one word in mind: eerie.