Portfolio: Dog Birthday Cake

Another week, another cake! This week I made a cake for my friend Beth who asked me to make a cake for her boyfriend's birthday this weekend. Sean and Beth have two dogs Cede (pronounced Sadie, apparently) and Brodie and Beth wanted a cake that featured the pups on top. Sean actually lives a couple hours outside of Austin so he and Beth frequently visit each other on the weekends, so this is a big surprise for him!

Here is a picture of the final product:

The cake was cookies and cream and was frosted with cream cheese icing.  I tried to tint it blue like snow, but it turned more green thanks to the yellow from the butter!

And here's the real deal!  The one on the left is Cede, complete with white paw and chest patch and black tipped tail.  Brodie is the blonde fella on the right.

To be completely honest, these two pretty pups are my first foray in figure modeling with fondant.  I tried to do it my way first which was a disaster.  After three hours of swearing, grumbling, crushing, restarting, and more swearing, I finally gave up and did a Google search for how to's.  Lo and behold, I stumbled across Lorraine McKay, which if you don't know who she is, she's freaking amazing.  Not only is she one of the foremost educators on fondant figures, but she also spends a lot of time working with special needs people, which is awesome.  And she's Scottish.  Seriously, it's a whole new experience to watch a video with a Scottish woman instructing you on how to make a "dun peavey dohg!" I found a YouTube video of how she does dogs in fondant, so I followed along and managed to create two of the cutest canines this state has ever seen in about 20 minutes!

I let them dry overnight, which if I may offer a word to the wise, they settle a bit depending on how much fondant you used.  I think I should have allowed all of the pieces to dry separately and THEN pasted them together, but whatever.  It is what it is!

Beth was over the moon when she saw them, which made me proud.  They did look pretty darn good for my first fondant figure attempt!  I've decided I need to start practicing some more with figure work and coming up with stuff, perhaps a few tutorials to demonstrate.  If you're interested in seeing some more of Lorrain McKay's stuff, look for Aine2 on YouTube or you can visit her website here.

Happy Baking everyone!
Kelly