LOTR Marathon and Bilbo's Hobbit Hole Cake

The other day, my friends and I decided to have a 'Lord of the Rings' movie marathon. With 'The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug' film coming out in a couple of weeks, we really wanted to get back into the hype!

You can watch the trailer for it here:

And what better way to SWEETEN up a small, casual 'Lord of the Rings' themed hangout at home.. but by BAKING A CAKE!
We were going to make a cake shaped like Bilbo's Hobbit Hole! aka "BAGS END"! And it was going to be a strawberry jam cream chocolate cake! Covered in lots and lots of green icing!

You can find a recipe for a cake here: Taste of Home's Strawberry Cream Cake recipe.

Lol, this isn't a recipe blog post since it technically isn't an original recipe. I just wanted to show you guys some pics of the cake and how well it looked sitting in front of the tv while we watched LOTR :)

So... we firstly baked 2 normal, round chocolate cakes to make the 2 layers of the cake.
While we waited for it to bake, we watched the first disk of 'The Fellowship of the Ring: Extended Edition'. Wow... I don't own the Extended Editions, but I really want one now. I felt like I was watching the film for the very first time!

Anyways, after the first disk, we set to decorating! I think this is the task that I enjoyed the most! But also the stickiest!

We put strawberry jam and whipped cream between our two 'layers', stuck them together and covered the entire thing in green icing!

We achieved the grass effects by stabbing the icing with a fork, and kind of using the sharp point to 'raise' the icing a bit as we were pulling out the fork.

The Back of the Hobbit Hole.
Lol, can you see my friends reflection?

We used MnMs and cream to surround our little Hobbit Hole to make it looks like stones and mud!

The Finished Product! Complete with chimney and door with a knob right in the middle!

And the above picture is the front! 

We added in our own Bag End sign, just to make the top of the hole look less plain. We surrounded the front of the house with some dried dates. And for the door, we used a biscuit which we covered in icing! We then used a toothpick to make some markings on the door!

The knob is a tiny MnM!

For the windows, we used the same whipped cream that we used to make the 'mud'. And voila! 

The only thing left to do was finish our marathon! Whilst eating our cake!

OH! and this is completely unrelated to cooking, but this Hobbit/Mean Girls parody had me in stitches!

After watching the MeanElves video, and after watching the LOTR films, I REALLY want to read the books now. I'm curious about the story of Legolas, about Aragorn and Arwen, and all them other characters in the film that we really couldn't see in the book. I've read the character backgrounds on wikipedia, and there's a giant chunk of stuff that I didn't know!

I've read the Hobbit for English class back when I was in high school, but I hardly remember what happened. 'The Hobbit' film actually refreshed my memory, but didn't refresh it too well.
I have a copy of 'The Hobbit' book on my shelf. Funnily enough, I remember receiving it for my birthday because my mum noticed how much I loved reading it for English. And I hated English. English was my worst subject at school!

I am yet to obtain a copy of the LOTR. I'm thinking of heading down to my local library and borrowing it. But it's SO THICK and I'm not sure if I can finish it within the loan period ahahahah.
Confession: I did borrow all three books back in the day when I just finished reading 'The Hobbit' for the very first time. I was overwhelmed with the size of the novels, I didn't get past the front cover. And so, back to the library it went.

Ah, I'm pretty sad that I didn't read it. I was young back then.. I think maybe 12 or 13? But I'm in my 20s now. I think I can do it!
LOL, as I'm typing this, I can see my bookmarked copy of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' novel on my bedside table. Still haven't finished it, and I started it 4months ago..