My church is having a salsa contest in a few weeks and since everyone knows me as the cake lady I thought it would be funny to make a cake that looks like chips and salsa. My question is what is the best way to achieve the wet, red salsa look. I thought about using raspberry or strawberry filling and adding fondant pieces. I would love any opinions as I would like to try to make it look as real as possible. Thanks 
You could make the inside of your "bowl" a tomato red and then fill it with piping gel colored red with chopped gummy candy pieces (red for red pepper or tomato, green for green pepper, yellow for tomato seeds)
OR
You could make it look like a fruit salsa with cinnamon chips. Use preserves and actual fruit pieces (kiwi, apple, raspberry, strawberry and a little sugar) and then take flour tortillas, cut into "chips" and coat with cinnamon & sugar.
I would think if you put fondant pieces in piping gel or jelly or jam they would dissolve. However, candy pieces (like Mike & Ike which would come in all the necessary colors) should hold up like lees_luv mentioned.
Make the cake part be your chip and dip bowl, and actually carve it out so that your salsa bowl is part of the cake and then make your chips and put around that.
You could make your chips out of fondant or gum paste just cut them into triangles and let them dry some flat, some curved, etc. Ohhh, and you could even make some of them look like blue corn tortilla chips. Sprinkle a little bit of really fine sugar over them to look like salt.
Sounds like a really neat idea.
I made a nacho cake once. For the chips I melted yellow candy melts and added some chopped up pretzels (for the speckels). Then I piped them into triangles. You can see them in my photos. They looked real. I also make some broken and dried some with dowels under them for the rolled look.
I did a giant burrito cake and for my salsa I added fondant pieces to red piping gel, they did'nt dissolve and it looked like real pico.
I just chopped up colored fondant the same way I would if I were making salsa at home, onion, tomataoes, jalapenos, cilantro....
The chips are colored white chocolate with some grated dark chocolate.
I think it's a really cute idea, post pics when your done!
thank you so much. They are all great ideas. You right about the fondant melting. Gummy candies or mike and Ikes are are great idea. I'm really excited.
Thanks for all your ideas for this cake. Here it is!!
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Awesome! It turned out great! So, how many people did you fool? I'd love to hear any stories.
Actually there was MANY people fooled. I told one friend to go look and she said "oh where is it?" among all the other salsas. Another lady took a chip and tried to scoop some then said "Oh this salsa is very sweet". Another friend kept trying to convince me it was some kind of cheese dip with a fruit topping. I kept telling her no its cake!! LOL So funny. It was really fun seeing everyone trying to scoop some out and then trying to figure it all out.
I am a little disappointed that I did not win most creative. I guess they didn't think I should win because it was not actually "Salsa" I know in my heart what was the most creative.
I totally agree you should have won most creative! Mmmm..."sweet salsa." What did you end up using for the salsa, by the way?
I was really not that pleased with how it turned out. I used strawberry filling then chopped up gummy bears and mike and Ikes. It looked ok but I would suggest doing something different to make it more realistic. Maybe piping gel would have looked better. Oh well.
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