Murder Mystery

If you have never had or been to a birthday party with a themed activity, I highly recommend it. It's a good time. I was invited to a murder mystery party with a wetern theme. The murder was to take place during a poker tournament. I was asked to make the cake for the party, with little guidance on what to put on it. What you see below is what I came up with.

The wanted poster, playing cards, and poker chips are fondant. The rest is white icing, tinted to whatever color I needed. Several ideas came to mind. One was the 5 aces, indicating that someone was murdered because they were cheating. The poker chips were obvious, and I wanted a wanted poster with a silhouette of someone with a cowboy hat. The border of the cake was meant to look a little like rope. I had another idea of taking the rope and bringing it into the center of the cake and framing the bad guy's face with a noose, but I thought that would be too busy. Another idea that one of my friends offered to me was to do a clue board. I almost went with that idea and made the rooms into the old west buldings, and maybe put a gun, knife and noose on the cake. I decided I liked the wanted poster idea better, so went with it. I did keep the knife idea though, as you can see from the picture below. The first picture above was how the cake looked when I left the house. When I got to the party, I inserted the knife into the picture. The knife was a tongue depressor covered in fondant. A little gel food coloring completed the blood splatter effect. I didn't want the knife falling over on the car ride over, so I waited until I got there to indert it. The cake was a hit at the party.