I saw a few wonderful shark cakes. I am interested in making a shark cake where the shark is coming out of the cake at an angle with his jaws wide open . . .

What I don't seem to understand, is how the top jaw is supported at this angle? I would prefer to use a baked shark rather than a rice crispie shark . . . is this even possible?

Thanks in advance for your ideas.

I originally tried to make the top and bottom jaw out of cake but realized this was not going to work. I ended using styrofoam for the lower jaw and was much happier. The top jaw is cake, I cut styrofoam circles in half and glued them together to make the inside of the mouth and lower jaw. This propped the top jaw up. PM me for more detailed instructions on how I did it, others may have different methods.

I originally tried to make the top and bottom jaw out of cake but realized this was not going to work. I ended using styrofoam for the lower jaw and was much happier. The top jaw is cake, I cut styrofoam circles in half and glued them together to make the inside of the mouth and lower jaw. This propped the top jaw up. PM me for more detailed instructions on how I did it, others may have different methods.

Thanks for your suggestions, I managed to build my own design for the open mouthed jaw.

I have a small family gathering for birthday parties and I was not wanting to make a 2 layer cake (plus shark cake for topper), so I "faked" the bottom layer using a dense styrofoam that was carved to the same dimensions as my top layer. (styrofoam was wrapped in foil, then plastic wrap for sanitary reasons). I iced both layers together to give the appearance of a 2 layer cake - with no filling. This gave my cake some height and durability.

I used this styrofoam layer as my support for the bamboo skewers that held up the shark's cake board. This cake board (foil wrapped cardboard) was bent at an upward angle on one end to support the open jaw. I skewered 3 bamboo skewers inside the cardboard (jaw end) at the angle that I wanted the shark's jaw to be opened. So the skewers went through the cardboard, through the layer cake and into the styrofoam at an angle.

It worked out so beautifully! I used a chocolate zucchini cake recipe for the shark's body, and boy was it a hit! This recipe was similar to any pound cake recipe, but was super moist. I had no trouble at all freezing, carving and icing this cake recipe to look like my shark. Zucchini is my new favorite cake ingredient! Healthy and undetectable - like most veggies should be!!

Here's how he turned out . . .

How cool is that? Reminds me of the ride at Universal Studios (I think that's where the Jaws ride is). Very cool. How did you do it?

The bottom layer of the base cake is styrofoam. This is what I used to support the bamboo skewers that are holding up his top jaw. I also had carved the zucchini cake (while frozen) to stand up at an angle to look like he was coming out of the water.

Looking back, I think that rice crispie treats would have made this shark a lot easier, but I preferred to make him out of cake. (my family doesn't particularily care for rice crispie treats for some reason).

Thanks for your comments.