Prep time: 2 hours (because of everything being made from scratch).
Baking time: 2 hours (cakes), 1 hour (burger/dogs) 10 mins (Grill)
Assembling time: 1 hour
Total time: a little over 6 hours.
I made this homemade BBQ charcoal grill cake for my husband’s work, they were having a BBQ. So I came to this website for some ideas and here’s mine:
I made two ½ sheets layered made-from-scratch carrot cake (I am feeding 50+) I put non-colored cream cheese icing between the layers. I cut out the center of the top layer about 1 cm down to create a “hole”. I then iced in homemade cream cheese frosting with a little bit of black “Soft Gel Paste Food Color” to make it gray.
The “charcoal” is made up of mini-marshmallows, the black food dye, and a tsp of Hershey’s chocolate syrup. Put in plastic bag and shake till marshmallows are evenly coated. I had to use a glove to disperse the marshmallows evenly.
The grill is made up of melting chocolate with some black food dye and a bit of vegetable shortening. Then put in a cookie dough press and free-handed the grill. Make sure the chocolate is HOT.
The hamburgers and hot-dogs were made beforehand as I didn’t want to spend all day in the kitchen.
The hamburgers are made of Chocolate Rice Crispie Treats. I made these by hand so I could dye the melted marshmallows with brown food dye and Hershey’s Syrup. Then I used a cookie cutter to cut them out. I left the one that fell apart like that because sometimes the burgers do come apart on the grill.
The hot-dogs are made of melted then formed Tootsie Rolls & Starbursts. I didn’t have enough cherry (as mentioned by other people) so I used Strawberry & Lemon too. I made sure that there were an equal amount of Starbursts & Tootsie Rolls.
I then put the “grill marks” by using black gel icing. This homemade BBQ charcoal grill cake will be served with an actual BBQ spatula.
This cake is incredible…the most authentic of all those I searched for! I love the sound of the carrot cake and creamcheese filling, if you were trying to impress the crowd, (which you no doubt did!) but I will elect to start with a box cake, for time sake, and just make the cool decorations to get the wow factor. thanks for sharing.