Bowl of Noodles Cake

This "Bowl of Noodles" cake is (obviously) for someone that really loves his noodles! On a recent trip to Japan, he visited this Cup Noodle Museum with his family! Each person even got to customize their "Cup Noodles", adding in whatever flavour combo and toppings they wanted, in a cup of their design. That's pretty cool! So, for his birthday, his wife asked me to make a cake for him. Actually, all she said to me was "Can you please make him a birthday cake? He loves noodles." Of course, I had to go the hard route and I made a 3D bowl of noodles cake!

Bowl of Noodles birthday cake!

The cake itself is 4 layers of Devil's chocolate food cake, filled with 3 layers of whipped dark chocolate ganache, and iced with chocolate French buttercream. After carving the cake and refrigerating it until it was nice and firm, I flipped the "bowl" upside down and covered the whole thing in a layer of white fondant, before flipping it right-side up again and covering the top with a 7" fondant circle.

I rolled each strand of noodle by hand. Sure, making fondant snakes is easy. But making LOTS of fondant snakes, and making sure they are of even thickness takes quite a bit of time. I did try to use my kids' Playdoh extruder machine to make the noodles, but it didn't work at all. (Don't worry, I washed it out with hot soapy water first!) I guess fondant is too thick for the extruder because nothing would come out, no matter how hard I pushed. Playdoh is probably a lot softer and more elastic than fondant is. Oh well, no noodle-making short cuts here!

Shrimp Ramen?

Of course, every bowl of noodles should be topped with other things to make it more delicious. This bow of noodles cake was topped with a hard-boiled egg, a cabbage leaf and some shrimp! I made the-boiled egg by rolling yellow fondant into a small ball and nestling it inside some white fondant. Then I rolled that into a ball and cut the whole thing in half. Would've looked better if the "yolk" inside was more round.

lots of yummy toppings

The stem of the cabbage leaf is white fondant rolled into a thicker snake. The leaves were made out of green fondant. I rolled the fondant flat and cut out four leaves using a flower cutter. I then arranged the leaves, sticking them together with a bit of water, and then curled the edges up to make them look more realistic. 

and a little holly for the Christmas-birthday boy

My favourite topping was the shrimp! The meat was made out of white fondant, white the tail was pink fondant. I drew on the stripes and coloured the tail orange with some edible food markers. 

Here's a pic of the birthday boy and his lovely family, courtesy of his wife. Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas!

Happy Birthday, Meng!