While most of you probably spent the 4th of July eating meat in tube form and blowing things up, I spent the day in preparation for my favorite holiday in July: SHARK WEEK! Look, sharks have been around WAY longer than America, so I’m gonna chews celebrating them every time because nofin compares to the awesomeness of sharks. I wanted to make my very own great white shark cake to launch the week off properly, so everyone, meet Bruce:
Would it have made more sense to make Bruce out of red velvet cake? Probably. But I have yet to find a box mix gluten free red velvet cake anywhere, and much like the great white, I prey on opportunity because I’m too lazy to go hunting about the pantry to find everything needed to make it from scratch, so, Bruce here is literally ready to party: he’s a gluten free funfetti cake with cream cheese frosting. I somehow managed to make him weigh in at 254 calories a slice for 8 slices total. Technically, I could try to eat him whole (I feel like he would appreciate this as a shark) and still not break the macro bank. I’m hooked. Follow along with the photo tutorial and video tutorials below to make your own so-fish-dicated shark cake, oh ha ha!
-Bruce
I definitely recommend carving til your shark it a lot pointier on top than mine is. I followed along with this YouTube tutorial, and it was SO HELPFUL. My nose layers just felt really flimsy, so I was afraid to cut into them to make them more narrow. If I hadn’t been SO EXCITED to make this cake, I would’ve frozen him for a few hours and carved into him more. Either way, this is a cake I have been dreaming up for a few years, so I’m thankful he turned out okay (and that my favorite shark is a great white and not a hammerhead, because LORD that would’ve been difficult to make). He might look like a sandworm from Dune when you’re looking at his mouth head-on, and a few times during carving I had to ask myself if this was a shark cake or a cake, um, more appropriate for a bachelorette party, but in the end, he definitely looks like a shark and not something you need to shield your children’s eyes from. Unless your kids are scared of sharks. Then sit them in front of Discovery Channel all week so they can discover a healthy fascination for some of the longest surviving creatures on the planet. ‘Til next time, my fellow eaters!
Recipe and Instructions
Gluten free funfetti shark cake with cream cheese frosting
A great white shark cake that's bloody perfect for Shark Week
I recommend making one box cake mix at a time unless you have a HUGE mixer and double ovens, so split the ingredients listed below in half. Do the same for the frosting to not overload the mixer there as well. You will have an extra cake layer leftover. You can keep this to use as carving pieces for the nose or freeze to use later. When carving, you will have lots of leftover scraps; you can turn these and the remaining cake layer into cake pops with the leftover frosting for less food waste.
Ingredients
CAKE*2 boxes of gluten free yellow cake mix
*150 grams (2/3 c) unsweetened applesauce or fat free Greek yogurt
*2 cups fat free or skim milk
*6 eggs
*2 tbs vanilla extract
FROSTING
*448 grams (16 ounces) of 1/3 the fat cream cheese, softened
*452 grams (2 cups) fat free Greek yogurt, strained overnight
*Two 16 oz bags of Lakanto powdered monkfruit
*1/2 tsp citric acid
*2 tbs clear vanilla
*2 tbs milk
*1 Tsp vanilla
*Red and gray/stone gel dye
*2 #12 piping tips
*White and black candy melts
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 and spray 4 8″ round pans with cooking spray.
- Whisk cake ingredients together in a stand mixer on low for 30 seconds before switching to medium-high for two minutes.
- Pour batter into prepared pans.
- Bake for 30 minutes and allow cakes to cool fully before frosting (can pop in the freezer to speed up).
- To make frosting, whisk cream cheese and yogurt for 3 minutes before adding in half the powdered monkfruit, extract, citric acid, and milk.
- Add in remaining monkfruit mix fully.
- Take a small amount of frosting out of the mixing bowl and put into a medium bowl; dye this red.
- Once cakes are cooled, level and keep scraps to use as nose pieces; I cut mine in half.
- Place a cake layer face down on a cake plate and add a thick layer of plain white frosting on top; repeat 2 more times until you have 3 layers.
- Add frosting to the backs of the level cake scraps and place so they’re an inch or two in to the edge of the cake (see 1st photo above); freeze for one hour.
- Use a serrated knife to carve in the shape of a torpedo and hollow out the mouth area.
- Crumb coat the entire cake in a thin layer of white frosting and freeze for at least one hour.
- Use an angled spatula to pipe red frosting in the mouth; use wavy smoothing patterns to give the mouth texture inside.
- Place some plain white frosting into a piping bag with a #12 round tip. Trace around the mouth to outline his lips.
- Pipe white frosting on the belly side of the shark.
- Dye remaining frosting gray and load into another piping bag with a #12 round tip. Pipe gray frosting all over the back of the shark.
- Smooth out all over, being careful while smoothing the white to gray borders. I found it easiest to use acetate collar/flexible plastic cut into small squares to smooth all over…you can leave some rough texture/lines to look like scars.
- Cut white candy melts in the shape of triangles and insert into the mouth for teeth.
- Use two black candy melts as eyes.
- If desired, use a food-safe paintbrush to add strawberry syrup to the teeth and mouth to make it look like blood.
- Keep your shark in the fridge until ready to devour!
Nutrition
Macros8 servings
254 cal/28.1 c/11.1 f/10.4 p per slice
Kate Bakes Cakes 