At this point I nearly gave up on the melting aspect of the cake. Bear in mind that while I was carrying out these tests the day of the party was fast approaching and I was already well into the creation of the advance elements of the cake - the bloody eyeballs, the skull, and the garnishes, which I will discuss in more detail later in this narrative. But I decided to persevere and test one final type of icing - whipped cream icing. I have never used whipped cream icing before because it is notoriously unstable and the cake, once frosted, has to be frozen or refrigerated. Surely this intimidating, unreliable icing would be fragile enough to melt off my cake!

I made a few test noses this time, so I could test the icing in the fridge and the freezer as well as on the hot plate. I also made test noses of a 50-50 mix of boiled icing and whipped cream icing, because I was afraid that the whipped cream icing, by itself, would be too unstable.(I also tried mixing the whipped cream icing with the buttercream icing, but this instantaneous collapsed into a lumpy mess.) It turned out, however, that the whipped cream icing is actually sturdier and more structural by itself than in conjunction with the boiled icing. And, to my lasting delight, it turns out that whipped cream icing does, in fact, melt when placed on a hotplate!

With rekindled hope for the melting face, I performed a few additional tests on the whipped cream icing to determine if it can be painted with an airbrush (It can.) and to determine if it can be painted with a paintbrush (It can, but only if it's thoroughly frozen.). At this point I also hit on the idea of using a heat lamp to melt the cake from above in conjunction with the hotplate melting it from below. Of course, I didn't have a heat lamp, but I tried a 60 watt bulb and even that melted the test nose, so I went out and bought a heat lamp from the hardware store across the street, as well as a 200 watt bulb. I would have bought two heat lamps, but they only had one, which, as you'll see later, was very fortuitous.

And thus ends the saga of my icing experiments, leaving me ready to move on the saga of the actual cake. So if you thought the icing story was long-winded and melodramatic, you ain't seen nothin' yet.