Reality TV Shows and the Cakes that Love Them

Let's just start this post with a little bit of honesty. Reality TV is fun to watch. It's easy to make fun of and it's pretty addicting. My family watches a fair amount of television, most of it of the reality persuasion.


One of my family's favorite reality TV shows is Big Brother. For us, it means summer and pizza and friends coming over. It also means trashy young people fighting to stay in a living arrangement that requires extrememly awkward physical challenges, weeks of restricted food allowances, hours of painful small talk, and scores of conspiracy theories.

Clearly, Thursday night's Big Brother 11 premiere demanded a cake.


I used the Big Brother occasion to try a recipe from Sky High: Irresistible Triple Layer Cakes. I haven't bought the book yet (I am working on it!), so I followed the recipe for Chocolate Sour Cream Cake and Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Icing according to Smitten Kitchen.


**Alert: it's a wonderfully simple one-bowl chocolate cake with a creamy rich peanut butter icing.**


These two make a really cute couple. They really bring out the best in each other.


But what's this? A ring o' cake?

Hahahaha... here begins my awkward first attempt at a carved cake. :) I wanted the Big Brother cake to be a hot tub since so much of the houseguests' time is spent either cannoodling or at least scheming in the hot tub out back.


I used cinnamon graham crackers to signal the wood paneling on the outside of the tub. And I frosted the ring o' cake so I would have room inside the cake for water.


I used Wilton recipe icing for the water, writing, and other decorative elements. I filled the hot tub with blue water, a dark blue Big Brother logo, and white hot tub bubbles. That done, I piped the houseguests names around the edge of the tub and finished her off with a reverse shell border.


So is it ridiculous? Is it a bit much? Sure. And probably.

But it was tasty! (And it made watching Big Brother mostly bearable.)