I have a friend (or several, actually) who is a huge Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire fan.  When her birthday was approaching and I started planning out her birthday cake, I was pretty sure I’d do something GoT related.  Maybe something simple, like a house crest of one of her favourite houses.

Oh, I suppose I should add: Spoiler alert!

But then someone said, “the Red Wedding would make an interesting theme for a cake!”  I was intrigued.  How could you encapsulate such a gruesome, horrible situation into a cake?  And then it came to me – well, it was a wedding.  So I started with that.  I made a little wedding cake (3 tiers are 8″/6″/4″, chocolate cake with super rich chocolate fudge icing, at birthday girl’s request).  I threw on some beaded borders and some roses and rosebuds.  Pretty!

Just an innocent wedding cake…

And then I went all House Frey on that wedding cake.  Greywind got the same treatment as in the book/movie, except this time he was to be mounted on a cake instead of his dear Robb.

Assembly of “Greywind” cake topper

Then the blood.  I did some experimenting with different fake, edible “blood” recipes for something that was pretty realistic.  I ended up combining agave nectar (like corn syrup), red gel food colouring, a little bit of chocolate syrup (to make it darker), and some piping gel to thicken it up slightly.

I waited until we were at the party and just about to bring it out to do the drizzling and add the topper.  I finished it off with some flaming red candles, and boom!  Red Wedding Cake.

Finished Red Wedding Cake

It was well received with lots of “Eww”s and “Ahhh!”s.  I think my favourite, unexpected moment, was when the birthday girl removed the topper: 

The stakes were there just for support, I swear!

So we dug in and enjoyed the delicious taste of betrayal, which I personally think is a dish best served with vanilla ice cream.

The Aftermath