Tank Cake

My aunt asked me to make a military themed birthday cake for my cousin. It turns out he likes tanks- so I got a tank in my brain and started carving away at the cake. I was super excited to make this cake because it is my first real carved cake! So here it is- let me know your thoughts!

I used my typical WASC cake recipe using yellow boxed cake this time, then added a little marble-twist.  I saved about 4 Cups of the yellow cake batter and added about 3/4-1 C of cocoa powder. Mix the batter and cocoa really well, then drop on the cake in rows.  Once the chocolate batter is striping the yellow batter, I took a silicone spatula and ran it through to get a marbling effect through the whole depth of the cake. (This is the pre-cooked marble cake).

Once all layers were baked, I leveled each cake, then I froze them overnight (makes it easier to carve!).  The Tank was composed of 2x 2-layer cakes.

The filling was a Vanilla Cream Cheese Mousse (without the vanilla beans) that was colored Army-man green.

The icing was an Vanilla Almond Buttercream (I used this recipe, but used half-almond, half-vanilla extract. I used the paper towel method to smooth the icing on the tiers.

 The final product was accented by black fondant strips to look like treads and gears. The gun barrel was created using a pretzel rod covered in buttercream, and tipped with a black fondant gun barrel.