Playful Puppy Birthday Cake

A few years of sending baked goods to work with Joe finally paid off! One of Joe's coworkers has twin baby girls who turned one yesterday, and he and his wife asked if I would make a cake for them. I said I'd love to, so they sent me a link to the party supplies they were ordering so we could figure out a cake design. The party theme was "Playful Puppy Party" and I thought it would be fun to recreate the little dog house with the puppy out front. They thought that sounded good too so it was time to get to work! I got to use my new square cake pans that I got for Christmas and they worked great. (Thanks Liz and Lance!) I baked three 8" square cakes and made fondant on Wednesday and Thursday nights then started assembling the cake on Friday.

I started the assembly by covering a cake board with green fondant for the "grass". Then I sliced each cake in half so there would be 6 layers and started stacking them with chocolate frosting in between. After they were stacked and refrigerated for a little bit, I carved it into a rough dog house shape. I had to use part that I cut off to add a peak to the roof.

After it was carved, I covered the whole cake in vanilla Swiss buttercream and tried to get it as smooth as possible. My last task for Friday night was making all the parts for the little puppy so they could firm up some overnight.

Saturday morning I did a little more work on smoothing out the buttercream before starting to try and cover the cake in fondant. I actually had to make a little more fondant on Saturday morning since there wasn't quite enough to cover the house. I also had to cover the cake in panels of fondant instead of how I usually do it which would be draping one large sheet of fondant over the cake. After the sides were covered, I cut a bunch of little shingles for the roof and put them in place. I thought that making shingles like that would hide imperfections better and allow me to cover the edges of the fondant panels on the sides. It also adds some nice texture to the cake.

After all the fondant was on, I decided to paint all of the fondant with thinned food coloring. I did this for 2 reasons. One is that it's a good way to get rid of all the cornstarch left on the fondant from rolling it out and two, it adds depth and dimension to the otherwise solid fondant colors. Here is how it looked after being painted.

Then it was just time to add all the finishing touches! I was very happy with how this cake turned out and for the first time ever, I was done well ahead of time. :) I delivered the cake and a couple cupcakes for the birthday girls. Everything made it there in one piece. Thanks to Tony and Robin for letting me make your girls' first birthday cake, it was a fun one!

I have another special cake to make this coming week that I'll share on here. It won't be a super fancy cake, but it will hopefully be the first of many special ones. I'll explain more when I post it on here :) Have a great week!