When our first two kids were little, Sandy made them some pretty cool cakes. There was a race car and a Tigger and I’m sure there were others that I’ve forgotten. When asked what kind of cake he would like for his birthday this year, he said he wanted a special cake like the ones he had made for the other kids, because he never had one. That sort of request is hard to ignore, so it was decided that he would get a cake dedicated to his favorite little beast, the penguin.
To ease the load a bit, we used a store bought cake mix. I know the purists out there might think this is a cop out, but the reality is that this is a kids birthday cake. Kids don’t care if it came from a box as long as it looks cool! So I baked a couple of rectangular slabs, stacked them and gave them a light base coat of icing for Sandy to work with.
While I was working with the cake, the arteest was hard at play shaping these awesome little penguins. Fondant comes in a tub that looks somewhat like a big thing of Playdoh. We chose to buy white and color our own, as it is easier to get the shade you want and is much cheaper. Sandy created an assembly line of Pingu’s buddies and got them done in a surprisingly short period of time.
I rolled out a fondant pond for the little critters to play on and then Sandy piped on the buttercream icing. Finally the penguins were arranged on their stage and looked great. Creating a cake like this is time consuming, but the kids absolutely loved the cake and that makes it worth spending the time.
The following weekend, we started over again with a polar bear cake. Photos of that one to come!
