Exploding Jello and Spaghetti

This year the food of choice to continue the exploding food tradition was Jello. 

Katie made a 2-gallon bucket full of Jello for us to blow up.  For some reason that I'm still not too clear on, the fuse burned extremely quickly, so I only caught the end of the explosion on camera and not the entire thing.  So you'll just have to trust me when I say it was pretty funny to watch.  Here's what I was able to get.

As a secondary food Matt and I thought it would be interesting to see what spaghetti would do, so I cooked up a large box of noodles. 

After how quickly the first fuse burned Matt was a bit antsy lighting the second one, which adds to the entertainment value of the video, while also making me a bit nervous about the whole thing.  Thankfully our guardian angels were working overtime, and everyone survived unscathed.

Just in case you aren't familiar with the back story on how the exploding food began, click here to read about it.  Click here and here to see the things we've blown up in the past.

Exploding Cake!

Without further ado, here is the exploding cake from the 4th of July, 2010!

The cake

My sister-in-law, Katie, and I took course III in the Wilton cake decorating series and this was the cake we made at the final class on June 30th.  Neither one of us wanted to take it home to eat it, so as we were assembling it in class we were discussing who would take it home to dispose of it instead.  I jokingly made the suggestion that we could blow it up at the 4th of July ranch festivities the following weekend as a follow-up to the exploding cupcakes from last year (story on how those came to be here),  and the idea quickly took hold and became the plan.

Matt digging a hole for the mortar

Last chance to have a bite!
(We decided to take the support pillars and cake plate out of the middle.  Being impaled by a $2 piece of plastic would be a rather lame 4th of July injury.)

The Stockemer kids figuring out what to do with all those firecrackers

A few last minute decorative touches

The decorators with their cake

Going out in a blaze of glory

Cake on the hole, fuse ready to be lit.
Like last year, the cake did have a bit of a mishap on the way to the ranch, thus the wonky looking fondant.  It really is turning in to tradition!
(I forgot to take a picture of the mortar itself, but it was around the size of a grapefruit I'd say.)

It's lit!

And now we wait...

... and wait...

... and wait.

The first blast!
(The first blast is what usually shoots the mortar in to the sky.  We put the mortar in the hole upside down so it wouldn't just shoot straight through the cake.  That would have been kinda anticlimactic.)


*Pause the blog music to hear the video*

And the aftermath:

I hope you enjoyed this year's installment of Confectionery Explosions :)
We are now taking suggestions on what next year's explosion should include.  Please leave a comment with your submission. 

Exploding Cupcakes

Matt's parents host a 4th of July gathering out at Spring Creek for family and friends, so Katie and I decorated some cupcakes to contribute to the dessert table. Unfortunately, those cupcakes were not meant to survive the drive out east unmarred.

As we were driving out of town another car tried to switch lanes into the lane we were driving in without checking to see if our lane was clear, so Matt had to brake quickly and swerve onto the shoulder to avoid getting hit. This send the cupcakes that were sitting on my lap sliding forward into the dash board, thus ruining all the hard work Katie and I had put in to frosting them. I was majorly ticked! I wanted Matt to drive up next to that inattentive driver so I could hurl a cupcake at his car I was so mad!

Luckily for that driver we didn't act on my impulse (which would have made a pretty impressive splat seeing as the cupcakes had a raspberry filling). We did, however, decide to stick M-80 firecrackers in the cupcakes and blow them up! What a satisfying experience! I'm pretty sure a new 4th of July tradition has been born - minus all the time we spent decorating them of course.

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