Terrific Cakes: A Nightmare on elm Street - Burnt to a Krueger Cake
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I’m a Celebrity, Get me out of This Meat Grinder
It’s time for a classic!
A Nightmare on Elm Street belongs to the category of horror movie that I can only describe as integral to my personality. As early as I can recall, this movie was in my life.
Part of this is surely because of the cult of Freddy Krueger. Robert Englund’s iconic performance in the first movie doesn’t quite steal the show, but the many sequels combined with the media attention around Freddy Krueger transformed this franchise from teen slasher into a cultural phenomenon. Freddy isn’t the only villain turned protagonist, of course. Killer made star is a down-and-out American tradition! Jason is the reason we watch our hockey-masked beefcake hack his way through Manhattan. Michael Myers is the reason we all took a drink of H20. Ryan Murphy can’t glamourize soft-boy killers fast enough.
There’s literally a movie called Cult of Chucky.
It’s not entirely our fault that we’re fascinated by these killers. After all the Tina's, Brittany’s, Chad’s, Brad’s, Thad’s, and Amber’s are carted away in body bags, usually the only character we know in the sequel is the killer. The cult-slasher villains of the 80’s became more than the sum of their many many many dismembered parts. They were the draw for audiences, and the killer with the most personality (sorry, Chucky), was Freddy Krueger.
The bodies sacrificed to these screen idols became less and less important with every roman numeral added behind a Nightmare, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Hellraiser… I think you get the point. Personally, it’s why most films from these franchises fail to scare or even entertain me. I don’t enjoy watching progressively emptier characters thrown into the arms of killers; you have to want the character being killed to live for there to be terror.
Growing up watching these slashers and being disenfranchised by their sequels definitely warped my perspective on this subgenre of horror, and until I rewatched A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) a few years ago, I threw this classic out with Nancy’s bathwater.
While later entries would dehumanize their victims in pursuit of their killer’s celebrity, Wes Craven’s first Nightmare is perfection.
It’s legitimately scary; its effects are awe-inspiring and shocking; but most importantly its characters are complex, resilient, and alive… until, well… they’re mulch.
Drop the arm routine in the chat, Tina.
Characters that Are Alive
One of the first things you see in this movie is the character of Tina wandering through the greasy hellscape of Freddy’s workshop. It’s a disorienting opening punctuated by intelligent choices that rock you back on your heels.
Why is she barefoot?
Why is there a sheep standing next to an open furnace?
How is her white nightgown so pristine when the air itself looks greasy?
My favorite detail about this scene, though, is just how hale and hearty Tina looks. She’s sweating. Her eyes flit like a deer. She is covered neck to ankle in a long nightgown with her toned arms the only exposed skin.
In the hands of a lesser director, Tina’s sleeping gown would have been a slip. Her nipples would have been the first thing you see. She’d be covered in makeup and long thin legs would be under our gaze as knives threatened to mar perfect teen girl flesh. We’ve all seen that movie (it’s called Friday the 13th).
This is not that movie. Tina looks like she could hold her own. She looks strong and alert. She’s scared, but not helpless. She’s as disoriented as we are, but there’s something about the entire performance that says “This isn’t how I go out.” Oh, Tina.
Shortly after she wakes we meet Tina’s cohort including the iconic Heather Langenkamp as Nancy, misunderstood bad boy Rod, and Johnny Depp as the mansplaining, affirmatively does-not-believe-women Glen. They laugh. They dream. They tease each other in a way only long-time friends can and in just a few scenes you care so much about them. As the conspiracy of their parents’ past tightens its grip around their necks, you can’t help but cry in frustration at their violent deaths. As Wes Craven would perfect in Scream, you care about every death in this movie. Freddy robs our future of these vibrant youth’s ambition and vigor. He is absolutely a villain.
My notes for this movie involve me writing ICONIC about fifty times.
ICON-Ick
I really must insist you watch the original A Nightmare on Elm Street if you haven’t yet.
It is legitimately scary, but in ways that will probably surprise you. Specifically, its fears are much more cerebral than bloody.
Don’t be mistaken: this is one of the bloodiest films ever made. The blood in this film, however, is usually portrayed in a scene so visually compelling, or technically complex that it mesmerizes rather than sickens (results may vary). People who watch Nightmare with me are probably also distracted by me constantly screaming “HOW DID THEY DO THAT?!” at the screen.
The above image from Nancy’s bathtub nap is one of the slowest, most effective jump scares in the film… and that’s before she gets pulled through the tub and nearly drowned. Like Tina’s disorienting opening scene, the whole thing feels like a nightmare: surreal and disjointed. And there are SO many scenes in this movie the defy expectations:
Tina’s death a la rotating set…
Rod’s invisible lynching…
Nancy getting licked by her phone…
Too long arms Freddy…
Glen’s death…
I mean… GLEN’S DEATH! Of all the deaths in the film, Glen’s is the one that kept me awake at night. There was a period of time in middle school where I would only sleep on the edge of my bed because I wanted to make sure I could roll away if a hole opened in the middle. The rapidity of his death is terrifying. It’s infuriating. It’s something you can’t look away from. Like the other deaths, it’s not gory in a visceral way, but it is perhaps the bloodiest death in movie history. But above all, I’m mostly just amazed at the technical prowess of the shot.
A Nightmare on Elm Street is stuffed to bursting with iconic images and scenes. It’s no surprise at all that this became a horror classic.
AN Embarassment of Rich Richnesses
This isn’t the first time I’ve attempted a Nightmare cake. I don’t think this is the third attempt? I’ve got at least four sketches in my books inspired by this movie.
This is probably because Nightmare’s inspiration can lead you down many pathways. There are a ton of incredible cakes online inspired by the grotesque imagery of this movie, but my vibe isn’t really about recreating iconic images via edible (and often largely inedible) sculpture. Fondant and modeling chocolate aren’t something I enjoy eating, and ultimately I make these cakes to be consumed. I’m more interested in flavor, texture, scent, and giggle-factor.
Nightmare’s flavors are quite a push-pull, though. It feels weird not to make a cake inspired by the overwhelming amount of blood in the film, but Freddy’s burned face is really iconic.
And let’s not forget just how much coffee is drunk in this movie! And vodka…
It’s a conundrum that I chose to solve by combining scorched flavors with wet wet wet raspberry coulis.
Jump scare: it was INCREDIBLE.
Ignore the flavors written here... somewhat.
Lamb, fire, popcorn, soda, coffee, coffee, coffee, blood, vodka, so many flavor options!
Burnt and Bleeding
IT Tastes LIke Burning
A few years ago I tried to make a Burnt Sugar cake and honestly kind of hated it. Burnt Sugar’s flavor is just that: burned sugar. You cook caramel far beyond its point of being delicious until it turns black and literally starts smoking. It’s a flavor that works surprisingly well in things like ice cream or pastries, but in a cake or frosting the flavor is too overwhelming for me. Burnt Sugar belongs to the category of flavor where just a bite is enough.
So how, then, to get just a bite of Freddy’s burnt corpse? The answer was surprisingly obvious: s’mores.
I torched the life out of this cake’s meringue exterior and ended up flambéing on top of that to double crisp this cake’s skin. The result was a smokity, crunchity cake that tasted like a campfire.
S’Mores is More Than Chocolate
Most s’mores baked goods are bad. Fight me.
The issue with most s’mores cake, pies, cupcakes, and cookies, is that the dominant flavor is chocolate. A chocolate cream pie with graham cracker crust is not s’mores. A chocolate cake with marshmallow frosting and crumbled graham crackers is not s’mores. These desserts may be delicious, but they don’t simulate s’mores.
A s’more’s dominant flavor is graham and marshmallow. Chocolate is an important and significant flavor in a s’more, but it is not the hero flavor.
My s’mores cake uses pulverized graham cracker as a replacement for a portion of the flour, which makes this tower of burned confection taste much more like a s’more than pretty much any other “s’more” flavored confection I’ve ever had. I encourage the world to steal this idea.
Choosing a Blood Base
Once I’d settled on the idea of a torched-to-death S’mores Cake, I hit a real baker’s block: how would I incorporate fountains of blood in harmony with a burned flavor?
I could have faked a chocolate sauce using dye, but I’m a big believer that color should signal and amplify flavor. Don’t get me wrong, I’m impressed with someone who can make something look like ketchup but taste like blueberry, but the answer 95% of the time in accomplishing things like this are mountains of food dye, which often imparts a bitter or toxic aftertaste.
The dripping blood for my cake needed to be red, but I didn’t want to use coloring, which meant I needed a red fruit. A red fruit that went with the flavor of smoke.
It took me a surprisingly long time to think of raspberry, mostly because I’ve never had a s’more with anything more than its standard alignment of chocolate, marshmallow, and graham. I’m happy to announce that raspberry is the perfect chaotic good accompaniment to a s’more. Everyone I fed this to was shocked at both how good it tasted and how none of us had ever had this combination before.
Honestly? I think all my s’mores in the future will have fresh raspberries with them.
A Cake That Bleeds
I had planned on making cake wells to accomplish the level of splashing this cake deserved, but when rotating my cakes during their bake I collapsed the layers a bit. With less sponge to work with, I opted to pipe reservoirs for my blood instead. I developed this technique for my Tremors’ Gougevoir cake and I’m happy to say it worked as well for blood as it did for worm pus!
Video Vixen
It was really hard to film this cake, honestly.
I’ve been struggling a lot with my amateur setup of lighting and recording these videos. I see how great so many things look on Instagram and YouTube and it’s hard not to get so overwhelmed with self doubt that I freeze in place. Case in point: I filmed this almost six weeks ago.
Overall I still think it’s fun to be in front of the camera, but as this project has gone on it feels more and more like I might need a class or consultant to help me break through my inexperience.
Part of the issue, of course, is my inconsistency. I rewatched “Return to Oz” vs. “It” and even in that short stint I see how much better the scripting is. I need to choose if this is a media I continue to work in, and, if it is, I need to commit to better chronicling my method and lessons.
I also need to remember that this is why I started this project. Before Terrific Cakes, I’d never edited a single video or even attempted to record process. It’s been an incredibly challenging but rewarding experience. As I near the end, though, I have to ask myself what I keep and what I jettison from this endeavor.
Recipe CARDS
(Right click to save the images and print them out!)
Incredible.
Andy Kahnke
I’m a home baker delighting and mortifying friends and family with my often terrific, sometimes terrifying, and occasionally terrible cakes and bakes.
