Silent Auction Crab Cake

A New Year, a New Crab Feed…

For the last several years my sister has been in charge of the kitchen for her church’s crab feed. I’ve tagged along a couple of times to help out when there weren’t enough volunteers. We make the pasta, green salad and slice the bread for a lot of hungry people. She’s got it down to a science by now.

After the crab feed there is a silent auction of donated items and services. Now, along with that is a dessert auction. Guess what? We’re going to make a cake for the auction!

Red velvet is a favorite of many, so we chose to make this cake red velvet with cream cheese frosting. First thoughts are of a tall round cake made to look like a pot with a crab in it. The twist is… the crab is happy because he thinks he’s in a hot tub!

Shhh… don’t tell him it isn’t a hot tub!

I started with making the cereal treat crab parts. Because it looked like the crab was submerged in the pot I only needed his top half and his two claws. To make our concept clear we would need a sign. We settled on writing “Hot Tub, Crabs Welcome!” in edible ink on a hardened “wooden” sign. It would stand up and/or lean against the pot. I also had to make the pot handles early so they would stay up by themselves. remember the details. Handles mean screws to hold them in place.

We covered this cake with grey fondant and then brushed silver dust over it to make it look like a pot. I did have a little problem with the fondant settling. I wanted the pot to have those ridges, so I put a ring of fondant around the cake in a couple of places. Not quite sure why this fondant sagged a little, but it just made it look like an old pot. Love when that happens!

On the top of the cake I put a layer of blue fondant over some balls of cereal treats to look like boiling water. Then trimmed the inside of the pot with a lighter white/blue mixture of fondant. The crab rested on top of this. I did need to use toothpicks to hold his claws at the right angles. (Next time I will make each claw one piece.)

Warming up the hot tub.

With the pot being silver, along with the cake board, I thought it needed something else. So, at the last minute I was making flames out of fondant to attach to the bottom of the pot. Much better.

Towel adds something to the back of cake.

To follow the theme, a white towel with blue stripes was added to the back of the cake.

I didn’t stay for the whole evening; but I heard that there were a lot of people at the crab feed who enjoyed the cake after the auction. Love it!