Long Time, No Sea

And that is the very cake that my daughter, Eva Bella, who is turning four tomorrow- wanted for her birthday.

She has been bugging me all year to have a crocodile cake for her birthday. Last year we dropped $50 on a frog cake that was cute- but unappetizing. The kids barely touched it and we ended up cutting it up into peices and freezing it… because we couldnt stand to throw it away.

So this year I decided to try my hand at making Eva’s cake. My last extravigant cake I made one of my friends named the Melted decapitated dragon cake. The story behind it was that it was Jacob’s 2nd birthday and he wanted a snake cake. It was getting late and he had fallen asleep, so I hurridly took the cake out of the oven and started to assmble it and decorate it before it was fully cooled not wanting to miss his birthday. It was a wonderful cake at first. It had cool green icing, tiny m&m eyes and a licorice string tongue. I woke up Jacob to come to the table for his cake and he was crankily rubbing his eyes not really feeling like having cake yet.

We sang happy birthday as the frosting melted the face of the snake into a distorted demonic figure. I cut the head off (the most desireable peice- right? It had all the candy on it!) and put it on a plate in front of Jacob. He took one look at it and started crying. Yeah, brithday cake disaster.

So I researched what it would take to make a proper fondant cake and got to it. It took me about 8+ hours today, but I got it done!

This was my first experience with fondant. I was set on making something nice and took time to add details, studying a dozen or so pictures of crocodiles and trying to figure out ways of achieving similar effects.

When the kids got home, it was a hit! Everyone loves it.

Here is the process my cake went through:

fondant before and after

Larger cake of 3 with anotomical parts cut

Cake assembled but not sculpted yet

After frosting, starting the fondant cover

Fondant covered and front legs on

Finished product