A Big Animal on a Little Cake

It's been quite a busy week for me, I actually made this cake for Thursday, I would have written it up by now but there was a birthday and Valentine's day and then another cake! (post to follow later).

The Project: A Big Animal on a Little Cake
The Theme: Baby Hippo Cake
Ingredients:
For The Cake:
8 oz Sugar
8 oz Margarine
8 oz Self Raising Flour
5 Eggs
For The Icing:
Jam for the middle
Plain Butter Icing for the middle
1 Pack of Royal Icing
Icing Sugar
Black Colouring Paste
Blue Colouring Paste

I was asked to create a baby hippo cake, one of the more random requests I've had, but I was happy to do it, keen for the challenge and experience of being able to do more shapely cakes. I am really pleased with it, there are a couple of things I would do differently if I had to do one again though, but I'll come to those later. I was also requested to keep this cake small - if you have seen some of my other cakes, keeping it small is quite tricky for me! 

I baked one big rectangular cake, cut out 2 circles, a crescent shape, a slightly bigger crescent shape and a smaller crescent. Then they were sandwiched together with the Jam and Plain Butter Icing to form the body. 

Quite often with shaped cakes like these, I find it creates a better shape if you use the butter icing and cake crumb trick, it gives a smoother finish and allows you to be in control of how you want the cake to look, plugging gaps where you need to and adding any details you can.

Once all the gaps had been filled, I added the nostril detail.  This would have been almost impossible to do once the icing had been on as the under layer would have already set. When I was happy with the shape, it was covered in the grey icing.

As you can see from the below picture. Adding the nostril detail at the bottom layer really worked well, it was really easy to just gently push the icing into the indentations.

Next I added the two ears and the two classic teeth

Then I created the eyes, this was the point when I started to like how it looked, I felt like it had come together. Until this point I was still worrying that the shape was somehow incorrect, it turns out he just needed his eyes to be complete.

Finally, he needed to be submerged in water, (not literally). Other cakes had done water using butter icing, although you have more control over the butter icing, I felt that using the usual water and icing sugar mixed in with some blue colouring paste, produced a much better water effect.

Lastly, I wrote on the back of the Baby Hippo in the same icing, to make it look like part of the water on the Hippo. 

I quite enjoyed making this one, I usually enjoy the cake when it's finished, after I have managed to pull myself through the stress, but I enjoyed this one from start to finish. 

Total Time Spent: 3.5 Hours

Useful Tips Gained: None

Kitchen Items to Purchase: Still need a new piping bag, I bought a pen thing that sucks up the icing and then you can push the plunger back down to write it out, would have been wonderful if it had worked, instead it was a massive disappointment (I would not recommend them). Also still need a smoother.

Items Added to Amazon Wishlist: None

Miscellaneous Items Wished For: None