Easy to Make Chinese Takeout Box Cake

I had to make these Chinese takeout box treats for a larger cake recently (coming soon!) and they were actually pretty easy to make!  Want to make your own?

I started with a couple of clean takeout boxes from my favorite Chinese restaurant.  We went there for dinner one night and I just asked them for a couple of extras.  They didn't even charge for them, so that's a bonus!

OK, we're going to use the boxes for 2 reasons - to mold the cereal treats and to make the patterns for the outside of the box, so treat it carefully!

The boxes are wax-coated, but I still gave it a good spray with pan spray so the RKTs wouldn't stick.  Then just pour in the cereal treats, let them come almost to the top (leave maybe 1/2 an inch) and then close the box so that it keeps it's shape nicely while it dries.

Once the cereal treats have set up, you'll want to coat the sides to smooth things out.  In this case I used royal icing.  While that's drying we can make our patterns.

To make your patterns, start by taking out the wire handle.  It was a little difficult to do without messing up the box, but keep at it and you'll get it.  Once the handle is out, the box unfolds nicely.  I used a piece of card stock to draw out the panels around the box, including the top flaps, but not the very bottom.  I then used those patterns to cut each side piece out of white modeling chocolate.  Once you have all your pieces, you can start assembling your box!

I used a little tylose glue on the royal icing start putting on the panels, just make sure you save the overlapping flaps until last.  Now you can start putting in the food!  Use whatever you want for food, but my extruded fondant noodles really did look the most convincing, and I had a blast making cute little noodle loops coming out of the box!  Add your desired logos using edible images and your almost done!

Almost done, why just almost?  Well, at this point you can be done. but my "food" wasn't looking saucy enough until I hit it with a little edible lacquer.  I was really surprised at how that little bit of shine really brought a lot of realism to the piece!

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