Cake decorating help

My soon-to-be-4-year-old wants me to make her a penguin cake for her upcoming birthday. I'm not much with the piping of icing so that's out. I don't have any penguin-shaped cake pans.

What I was thinking of doing was baking a sheet cake and icing it with a simple regular old buttercream-type icing. Maybe blue and white swirls to look like ice. Then I want to try to make a penguin out of fondant. (I've never used it before, but I found a recipe on allrecipes that looks promising). I figure I can fashion a penguin out of the fondant and put it on top of the buttercream. Make sense?

So. The recipe I found suggests that I use gel food coloring. I need black gel food coloring, obviously. Where in the heck do I buy something like that?

Any other advice on how I can make this thing would be appreciated, lol.

my first thought on a penguin cake would be a football mold because they are sort of the same shape.

The black gel icing is sold by Wilton. I do not know if they are specifically gel icing color, i think it is. It is not the old food drop color type. You use a toothpick to pull the color out.

A penguin is a hard one to make. I cannot "draw" on a cake and had to enlist the help of a friend from church for my daughters birthday for that one. I would say that you could do what you are doing with making the icing look like water/ice and then you could also buy little penguin figures and put them on the cake. That idea is always good with young ones because they get to keep them. It is like a bonus birthday present.

Here are some ideas for cakes, i check this site a lot for my "mom cakes". Some are piped, but some also use figurines.

http://www.coolest-birthday-cakes.com/c ... ideas.html

p.s. Good luck with the fondant if you go that route! i dont mean that sarcastically, being very serious. I don't think i would be successful with fondant. In all honestly i am quite intimidated by it....lol... don't know why it just sounds challenging.... i have never tasted it either, so that is part of the intimidation/being foreign to me.

Tina.

You should be able to get the Wilton black gel at Michael's Crafts. They carry a decent selection of Wilton and have the gel in many colors. YOu may need to buy in in the "Halloween" mix of black/ orange ( that's how I got mine).

Personally, I'd either do something like Becky suggested, or draw a penguin on top of the cake and fill-in, rather than mess with black fondant. Here is another cute penguin cake to inspire you:

http://family.go.com/contests/cake-recipes/cakes/penguin-birthday-cake-8746/
Deb

http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Peng ... hday-Cake/

this guy is adorable. doesn't he look like he wants to cuddle? don't be afraid of piping! this cake looks complicated but this type of piping with the star tip is SUPER easy (i used to do it helping my mom make cakes as a little girl). you just pipe little stars one after another until it's all filled in. it says this exact pan is retired but you could use any bear pan i'm sure, and if you bought the bear cake pan, you could probably use it again and again for lots of different animals. if you went to hobby lobby for the supplies, i'd bet you could get the doll eyes there for a dollar or two.

these videos should help...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YjqDBi-n8g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAhI-cOam30

good luck! let us know how your cake turns out, take pictures!

There is a book called "Hello Cupcake!" that has cute ideas, including a penguin. You might also try http://www.bakerella.com. She might have something you could use.

Thank you so much for all the ideas. She actually has a specific penguin in mind - an emperor penguin - but I think I could just look at a picture and modify any decorating to look more like an emperor. I don't think she'll be too terribly picky.

And I never would have thought to buy baking supplies at Michael's. Not in a million years. Good thing I asked.

I'll make sure to share a picture unless it turns out to be a complete disaster.

if your cake turns out to be a disaster (i'm sure it'll be fine) you should take pictures anyway and submit them to cakewrecks.com.

You can also have an edible created. It's a picture printed with edible inks on an icing sheet. You peel it off and place it on top of the cake.

For a non-pro, I'd really go with a snow and ice scene and buy some little toy penguins to place on top in the (icing) snowdrifts.

An idea for creating the "water" if you want to go with Leah's/my recommendation. I made this cake for my son's first birthday. ( It was awfully cute )
http://jas.familyfun.go.com/recipefinder/display?id=50214

Deb

An idea for creating the "water" if you want to go with Leah's/my recommendation. I made this cake for my son's first birthday. ( It was awfully cute )
http://jas.familyfun.go.com/recipefinder/display?id=50214

Deb

i check out a lot of cake sites, but had never seen this one. I am not a big fan of Disney, but i like the step-by-step and visuals on the cakes. Nice site..... thanks for posting it....

I have so much fun molding stuff out of fondant. It's like playing with play dough. You can make very tasty fondant using marshmallows and powdered sugar. http://whatscookingamerica.net/PegW/Fondant.htm
You can also buy the gel type icing in any color from M K Bryant's or Conway's or Hobby Lobby.
If you buy plastic figurines to put on a cake, make sure of the quality and that there's no chance of lead paint!
Have fun with it, it doesn't have to be perfect!

Campbell's Gourmet Cottage has gell food colors as well as pre-colored fondant. I also have the half dome cake pans and contour pans for fondant. If you need further help, please give us a call at 893-6700.

REMEMBER...SHOP AND EAT LOCALLY!!!!

Okay, don't make fun of me. Clearly I'm not a pro, but I don't think I'm quite at the level of cakewrecks.

I used some allrecipes recipes - Carrot Cake III and the Marshmallow Fondant. I decided to forgo the black food coloring because y'all seemed to think it would be a gigantic pain in the butt. So I added chocolate instead. I think it came out not too bad. She wanted to help so she made littie snowballs for the penguin to stand on. We also put them around the outside of the cake.



I couldn't even find my icing tips so I used a premade chocolate icing thingy from Kroger to do the writing. I'm not usually quite so sloppy, but there wasn't very much room left on the cake. But now you can see why I didn't want to draw the penguin freehand with icing.



Thanks for your help!

Tina, that looks great!

That is a great looking cake, Tina. I especially loved the part of your daughter making the snowballs on which the penguin stood.