Well, not so scary. I have baked this cake few days ago. It was a simple chocolate cake filled with the butter cream icing and decorated using fondant.
I got the idea for this cake by flipping though some old magazine. The original cake was actually three teared cake, where the top two tears where sitting on top of a spider and a third little spider was on the very top of the cake. Not only it was too complicated to make, I did not have enough people to eat even if I did make it.
It gave me an idea however for the cake pictured here. To make this cake I used 13 inch round cake pan, a 4 inch cup cake (for the body of the spider), plenty of fondant and thick pretzel sticks (to make spider’s legs).
The pumpkins around the base of the cake were made of fondant as well.
It is good idea to prepare your fondant ahead of time by dividing and coloring the fondant for the different parts of the cake. You can keep your fondant in a zip lock plastic container to prevent it from drying out.
If you have never worked with fondant before, you should remember not to store your cake in refrigerator as the moisture and fondant do not go well together. This is also why you will probably be much better off to fill your cake with butter cream icing instead of custard or whipped cream icing as both can go bad very quickly if not refrigerated. While butter cream can be stored at room temperature for 2 to 3 days.
If you need good book on fondant decorating techniques, I highly recommend The Cake Decorator’s Motif Bible: 150 Fabulous Fondant Designs with Easy-to-Follow Charts and Photographs