Bacon Tent Camping Themed Cake

My 9 year old is in cub scouts and each year they have a cake auction fund raiser.  This year's theme was camping.  Given the audience, and the fact that we live in Portland Oregon (which is obsessed with bacon) and the fact that I'm not going to have to eat the cake, I decided it would be pretty cool to decorate our cake with a bacon tent.  I know some of you are saying "yuck" and the rest of you are on the edge of your chair saying "tell me more."  If you are in the "yuck" group, I am with you.  I don't like bacon.  I feel like I am betraying my Portland-ness by saying so in writing, but it is just too salty for me.  But, again, I'm not eating it, and all the men and boys in my life think it is pretty cool.  So here is how I did it.

I used shish kabob sticks and bakers twine for the underlying structure.

Basically, I just made a vaguely tent like x shape that was tall enough that one piece of bacon draped across it would look tent like.  You want the stabby ends of the sticks to be down.   Then I wound the string around each part of the wood one time before moving to the next piece.  I realized that the bottom "tent" part was getting too wide, so I did some on the diagonal until it looked vaguely right.  Then I repeated the process lining the two ends up so they were vaguely the same size and shape (It is bacon. My target audience, boys and their parents don't care so much if it is symmetrical.)

Once I was done with the two ends I realized I was going to have problems tieing them to the crossbar unless I could get them to stand up, so I tossed two pieces of bacon on the broiler pan and stabbed the stabby ends into it and viola upright tent.  Long about this time, I realized that the shish kabob sticks were so long the bacon tent wouldn't fit in my oven.  So I broke off the ends and then moved my rack down one.  

  

Then I added the cross bar and tied it with bakers twine.

Once I made sure the oven would close, I took the pan out of the oven and started adding bacon.  

I stabbed each end of the bacon with a shish kabob stick as I added it.  I added bacon until it covered the cross bar from one of the triangle pieces to the other, and then to account for shrinkage added a couple extra pieces.  Then I realized the bacon was a little floppy so I added another shish kabob stick behind the bacon (again tied on with bakers twine).  Finally I tied the bottom shish kabob sticks that were stabbed through the bacon to the ends.

I left the little dip on the ends so that when the bacon shrunk in cooking it didn't tear my structure apart.  At this point there were only 2 pieces left of the pound of thick cut bacon I started with, so I just threw them on the broiler pan. I baked it in a 400 degree oven for 25 minutes (most of the bacon art I have made has baked for 20-30 minutes in a 400 degree oven).

When It was done it looked like this:

I decided to make things easy on myself and bake my cake in a disposable 13x9 pan.  That way, I didn't have to worry about getting a cake board.  I opted for yellow cake. And Chocolate Frosting.

Then I used those "extra" pieces of bacon to create a floor. 

Then I added my tent. And with my son's help, drew lines in the frosting where the fire pit and river should go. He placed chocolate rocks for the fire pit.

I then added cookies and cream "gravel" on the river bank.  And two Tootsie Rolls for fire wood.  Then I dumped some vanilla frosting died blue into the river.

Then I very carefully spread the vanilla frosting.  

Next I had my son put some Swedish Fish in the river.  And cover the river with blue sprinkles.

Then he dumped green sprinkle "grass" over the campsite.

Then we added some cookies and cream rocks to the camp site.

Then we decided we needed some bears fishing.

Finally we decided there were some bears taking a nap.

All in all it was a really fun project for both of us.