Arma D: The Birthday Armadillo Cake

While I was back up in Vermont for a few weeks, and the family was all together, we celebrated Rachael's birthday (a month early). Her birthday cake request: a Red Velvet Armadillo Cake.

I just recently saw Steel Magnolias for the first time, and although I initially thought of how awesome an armadillo cake would be, a part of me was thinking 'how the hell do you make an armadillo'?!?!?!

It was quite the process, which I'll tell you a bit about, but I think it came out pretty freakin' awesome. Take a look at Arma D:
We made a homemade red velvet cake, and at this point I have no clue which recipe I used. I think it would have come out pretty well if we didn't bake it in a football shape cake pan for an ungodly amount of time, resulting in a burnt bottom and mushy insides. And the pan tipped over in the oven, spilling out some of his guts. Oh well, we continued on.
After the cake cooled, we chopped off the ends and stuck them together to form his head. Using a batch of butter cream icing, we glued him all together and coated him in preparation for his fondant shell.
Never using fondant before, we picked up a box from Michael's (expensive!!!), and tried our best at decorating him. It took quite a while to color the fondant, kneading in black coloring until we established an appropriate grayish armadillo color (or what we deemed an armadillo color). We then rolled out the fondant, which had already started to dry (which I blame on a boxed fondant sitting on shelves for who knows how long), and laid a solid piece over the entire body.
We formed his legs, tail, ears, and eyes (dried blueberries), supporting them with a butter cream glue and toothpicks. For his scales we simply cut circles out of the fondant and layered and glued them down.
We had a little problem folding the fondant around his nose which was disguised (well enough) with a tongue. Plus it looks like he's totally lickin' his lips for that mini birthday cake next to him.
I'll spare the pictures, but the next day was a sad day for Arma. Rachael did the honors of the slaughtering, passing around a slice for each of us to consume. Arma did not taste very good, but it sure was the coolest cake that I've ever made. Plus, he's so damn cute you don't really want to eat him...just look into his sad little blue eyes one more time:
Happy Birthday Rachey Face!!!