Owen's Halloween Birthday Zombie Cake

Recently, when I got invited to go to the birthday party of a friend that happened to coincide with the Halloween weekend, and we were all planning on getting dressed up and into the spirit of things (pardon the pun). So, in keeping with the theme, I thought the cake I was bringing along should also be in keeping with the Halloween feeling. After a little brainstorming, this is what I came up with:

So, this started out as a twist on my last cake, Lorraine's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Zebra cake. I added a bit of green and black food colouring to the two sponge mixes to give it a little bit of Halloween pizazz:

Then, after feeling a little bit inspired by a few zombie cupcakes online, I up scaled a basic design to a more elaborate cake version. The decorating starts with a layer of green-tinted buttercream piped on with a grass piping nozzle:

Then I mixed a little bit of food colouring into regular shop bought icing with a cocktail stick, and attempted to make a few shapes:

(The cocktail sticks come in handy later for assembling all the bits and pieces for the cake)
Then, I blitzed some oreo cookies in a blender to make some "soil". It was sprinkled over the cake to make it look like the zombie guy is bursting out of his grave, like so:

I made the tombstone the night before out of melted white chocolate coloured grey with a little food colouring, and cut a slit in the cake to place it in securely.
Then, Barbara had the idea that the zombie guy should hold the candles, and when we finally lit them, it looked like this:

(I did intend for him to be holding drum sticks originally, since Owen is the drummer in a band in his spare time, but the drum sticks made out of icing weren't really stable enough to use. Thank goodness for Barbara's idea about the candles - it actually looks much better!)
Since there were many people there, the cake disappeared pretty quickly, which is just as well, since the hands had started having a mind of their own and were collapsing

I assume that since it went so quick, it must have gone down well with everyone. This was actually a really simple cake to make, and I had great fun working with icing like Play-Doh. Would recommend it to everyone!