Sausage Dog on a Cake

So this one was another unusual request and not to mention a fairly big cake to make! There were plenty of worrying and stressful moments involved, I mostly hated sausage dogs throughout the entire icing process. Once I started to put the sausage dog together my worries started to melt away :)

The Project: Sausage Dog on a Cake
The Theme: Sausage Dog on a Cushion
Ingredients: 
Cushion:
For the Cake:
24 oz Sugar
24 oz Margarine
24 oz Self Raising Flour
12 Eggs
For the Icing:
1 large pack of Royal Icing
Purple Colouring Paste
Plain Butter Icing (coloured purple) for the middle
Jam for the middle
Sausage Dog:
For the Cake:
2 Eggs
3 oz Caster Sugar
3 oz Self Raising Flour
For the Icing:
Plain Butter Icing (Coloured purple) for the middle)
1 large pack of Royal Icing
Brown Food Colouring
Black Colouring Paste
Red Colouring Paste

This cake was made up of two layers for the Cushion, with a Swiss Roll to make up the Sausage Dog on the top. Lots of work involved, it was a really big challenge. I'm not sure that I would have done anything in particular different, but I would have allowed myself more time, even though I started it very early, this cake did take pretty much all day to finish and I still felt like I was pushed for time at the end.

This project did not start off particularly positively, I started baking the cake, once it had been in the oven for around 10 minutes, one of the flip switches turned off, resulting in the oven going off (nightmare for a half baked cake! If the temperature dropped too much, the middle would sink!) Thankfully the issue was found and I was able to carry on with the baking. Talk about scary though!

I made the cushion by baking two rectangular cakes and shaping them into a cushion shape with a knife. 

You can see a little better on the below picture, that I then smoothed off the edges and cut a little slope into each side and sandwiched them together using the purple butter icing and jam.

Once set, I covered it with the white icing and smoothed it over (which would have been a lot easier if I had one of those smoothing devices).

Around each edge,I created a cushion trim and tassels on the corners using the Royal Icing, coloured purple, and twisted together.

Although I was using edible glue to stick them to the side of the cake, they had to be held in place whilst they dried. I found that using pins (which had been sterilised) worked the best, as they didn't leave big marks in the cake and I could easily take them out when it was dry enough to hold itself up.

When the sides were on, I was able to cover the join with the tassels

Now that the cushion was mostly finished, I needed to move swiftly on to the Sausage Dog. A little known fact about Swiss Rolls that is never on any of the recipe instructions - you need at least 10 hands to unwrap it carefully and remove the baking parchment when it's cooled, whilst making sure that you do not unroll it so much that it cracks or breaks, just something that I've realised over the years.

After I had managed to successfully unroll, peel off the parchment, fill with purple butter icing and re-roll, I could start on the rest of the body. Using the off-cuts from the cushion part of the cake, I created the four legs and the face of the dog. I had to use some butter icing mixed with cake crumbs to get the shape of the face right as well as for the hind legs and his rounded bum

Finally able to start with the decoration of the Sausage Dog, I covered the Swiss Roll, with it being the main part of the body, I needed to attach everything to it.

I placed him on the Cushion and added the legs. The front legs were placed on first and the back ones added afterwards. The hind legs needed a little more work with the upper part of the leg needing to be seen, rather than being just stuck on the side of the dog

Happy with the body, I started on the scarier task of completing the face. I had been given instructions and pictures of what the Sausage Dog looked like, so I copied the colourings as best I could. I was told that the eyes looked like they had a lighter background, and that the nose and feet were lighter too. Because of his long ears, the dog it was based on, quite often has his ears played with and folded over, this was a detail that I was asked to add in. I had to make sure that both ears had the brown on the top and pink underneath to ensure that they were the same thickness, once I had done that, flipping one ear back and sticking it there, was fairly easy

Next I added the eyes, with the small part being white to give a glassy, playful look to them.

The final detail for the face to be added, was the nose, which i just hand shaped and cut out the nostrils. I then added the lighter details to the paws and made indents for claws.

The very last thing to do was to write Happy 70th Birthday in purple and the cake was complete!

This was another one of those cakes that I was really happy with at the end. I do think that the cushion could have been smoother, it was just something that I had thought I could fix with my rolling pin, which as it turned out, I was not able to. Overall though, it was a fun challenge!

Total Time Spent: 10 Hours

Useful Tips Gained: Effective Cake Decoration Time Management!

Kitchen Items to Purchase: New Icing Bags. My last one has split, it's time to get a new one, or at least before my next project!

Items Added to Amazon Wishlist: None

Miscellaneous Items Wished For: Cake Smoother!! It's never something that I think of when I'm in Hobbycraft or a kitchen shop!