I adore the Hunger Games books. Adore them. I also love the movies, but as with most book to movie conversions, the book is better than the movie!
With Mockingjay out in theatres, I knew I had to make another Hunger Games video. I have previously made Mockingjay cupcakes, and Catching Fire cake pops, so I wanted to do something more epic! I knew it had to be in cake form, as I had already made cupcakes and cake pops, and one of my favourite parts of the Catching Fire movie was the scene in which Katniss is wearing her wedding dress and transforms into the Mockingjay. That scene is where the inspiration for this cake comes from.
From the bottom up- the bottom is the black feathers of the mocking jay, which leads up to the flames and finishes off with the remaining top of the wedding dress.
This is a challenging cake to make if you don’t have much cake decorating experience, BUT with the video tutorial I know that all levels can make it successfully. Planning ahead is important with a cake of this size, and with one of this many elements. The feathers need to have time to dry, so they can be prepped days, if not weeks ahead of time. The candies can be melted a couple of days ahead of time as well, though I don’t recommend more than a week ahead as the candy gets a bit sticky. You can also make the royal icing lace portion days, to weeks ahead as well, as it requires time to dry and doesn’t go bad. Bake and freeze the cakes the night before you want to use them, and prep the icings the morning you want to decorate. If everything is ready to assemble, the actually decorating and assembly of the cake is very straightforward. You can use any decorating technique to ice the cake, and you can also just simply slap it on with a spatula.
I’m looking forward to watching the new Mockingjay movie, now that the initial crowds have left the theaters! I hope you enjoy this Hunger Games cake.
Hunger Games Katniss Wedding Dress Cake
Ingredients:
- Prepared doll dress cake (or a tapered cake equaling 6 cups batter)
- Prepared 8″ round cake
- Red, black, white buttercream
- White royal icing
- Black and white fondant
- Red, orange, yellow hard candies
- Prepare feathers but rolling black fondant thinly on top of the feather press. Remove, and trim feathers. Repeat 20-30 times. Repeat process with white fondant, making 20-30 feathers. Allow to harden on a flower former or tight rolls of a few sheets of paper towel.
- Make lace detail with royal icing on a piece of parchment paper. ALlow to harden/dry. Wipe clear piping gel on top of the lace when dry and sprinkle on silver heart accents.
- Preheat oven to 325F. Remove wrappers from hard candies and melt all three colours together in the oven for 8-10 minutes, or until completely melted. Set aside and allow to cool.
- Bake and allow cakes to cool completely.
- Stack cakes on a cake board, attaching the 8″ cake to the board with a small swipe of buttercream, and then another layer of buttercream on top to attach the doll dress portion.
- Clean and wrap doll in plastic wrap, and press down into the centre of the cake.
- Fill piping bag fitted with 104 tip with black buttercream. Pipe ribbons of buttercream along the bottom of the cake, two to three times around the base of the cake, working up the cake. The black section should take up 1/3 of the dress.
- Place feather accents into the buttercream along the bottom at varying heights.
- Spread, or pipe enough red buttercream to attach the candy flames above the black feathers. Try to use lots of different shapes and shades of colours.
- Fill piping bag fitted with 104 tip with white buttercream and pipe ribbons on to the cake above the flames, all the way up to the base of the doll’s torso.
- Attach the white feathers at varying heights.
- To cover the torso, pipe white buttercream with a 101, 102 tip.
- Place lace detail onto cake over doll’s left shoulder.
- Serve when desired. You can store this cake in the fridge for 2-3 days.
