Penguin cake
My girl is now three. We celebrated with a very small party (the kitchen is still incomplete and in a state of upheaval). And the cake was a penguin. It consisted of coconut cake (the recipe doubled to make enough for the body and the head). I baked it at my mum's which was best place to do it, as I had access to her excellent cake tin collection - yes the head of the penguin was baked in a 4 inch cake tin - who would have thought such a thing existed. The cake was then frozen, sliced in half so the middle could be slathered with strawberry jam, then carved into an appropriate penguin shape. This was then slathered with more jam (to make the icing stick), then covered with plain and chocolate Orchard icing. A little of the icing was coloured with food dyes for the beak and feet. I roughed out a vague design myself, not liking the 'Linux' style penguin in the Australian Women's Weekly's 'Kid's Birthday Cakes' book. And it went down very well.
A picture of penguin before the candles got him. I chose a penguin in the end as it seems be one of the more major of Hannah's current obsessions (along with dinosaurs, Meg books and being a dragon or a butterfly). There are currently five penguins living at our house and they're all starting to look well loved (read; 'in need of a wash').
Edited to add: check the entry Penguin Cake revisited which gives more info on how I put this together.
posted by din at 10:56 pm
10 Comments:
What a great cake. My daughter M would luuuve that. She decided on the weekend to make her own cake. She came to me and said"Dad, I'm making a cake." Went to the kitchen to discover half a bowl of milk mixed with a few spoons of flour.
How cute is that? Well done. :-)
That is such a gorgeous cake!
Thanks guys for the complements, it was alot of fun to make. Today, finally, the last slice was eaten. I find this hard to believe - my child is a hoarder not a pig like myself. There have been a number of requests from Hannah for more penguin cake, but I think we will wait until my husband's birthday later in the year, which I suspect will mean a rocket cake.
And I now know the excellent keeping qualities of the coconut cake - I checked the last piece carefully for mould, it was fine.
I am gonna make it and i hope it is so good.
It's been quite a while. Hope you still check on this thread.
My daughter too has asked for a penguin bd cake. May I know how you covered the cake? Looks like fondant to me. The 'black' color turned out just right, did yo have to put a lot of color in it?
Hi - I don't check on old threads, but through the magic of blogger, comments appear in my email box.
Yes I covered the cake in fondant, I realise now it was a bit sloppy of me describing the icing with a brand name, particularly as I suspect it is only found in Australia. The colouring is in fact brown not black, I don't remember if I bought chocolate fondant or if I coloured it with cocoa - I've done both in the past. It's not too hard to get a solid brown with a few spoons of cocoa. I has seen the artificial black food dyes but I've never used them as I'm not so keen on using alot of artifial colours.
Love the cake! We are having a penguin themed birthday party for my daughter in a few weeks. I am not the most creative person, but if you could share with me what size cake pans you used and how you shaped it, I believe I could surprise her with this! Thank you.
I've written a little more on making the cake. Check the most recent entry 'Penguin Cake revisited'. All the best for the birthday.
Thank you for sharing the information, it is very helpful! I think you are getting so much traffic to your site because if you google penguin cake, your's is the second site that appears! Thanks again!
Post a Comment
<< Home