PETER RABBIT CAKE

This cake was SOOOO fun to do!! 

The customer wanted a one-tier cake with a "fence," a rabbit, and the little boy's name spelled out. I wanted to add little cabbages so I decided to put the letters inside five little cabbages and I think it came out adorable. I love the fence, too.

PREP WORK

The first thing I did was all the prep work. I did everything I could ahead of time: leaves, a variety of flowers, the rabbit (added the jacket at the last minute), the gold buttons, the basket, potatoes, pots, cabbages, watering can, and I mixed the "dirt" and covered it and put it aside.

Believe it or not, the watering can only took about 20 minutes total. It was just a matter of making the pot out of gumpaste and hollowing out the middle with my hand, making a tiny spout by rolling a piece of gum paste, adding a piece of macaroni inside, and an indention in the end of the spout, and cutting two tiny handles. After they dried, I painted them gold and then eventually gum glued them together and let dry. Easy-peezy!

PETER RABBIT

I shaped the rabbit and let dry for three full days. I used a small ball tool for eye sockets and just put two small balls of black fondant inside. After the gum paste was dry, I dry painted him. I added the jacket to the torso first (without arms). I then added the jacket onto the arms separately and secured the arms to the body (using macaroni and pre-made holes) and attached with edible gum glue. I propped the arms up overnight until secure and dry, then added the gold buttons and his little cottontail.

PROBLEM WITH THE EARS

 One problem I had is that since I use thin sticks of macaroni when assembling my figurines (so that everything is edible), the macaroni to one ear broke off; the piece of macaroni inside the rabbit's head was dried inside and I was unable to remove it without damaging the head. So I had to insert a thin, sturdy wire into his ear and insert that into his head right next to the macaroni that was already in place. I used edible glue to secure the ears in place and to keep them from wobbling, then let dry for a couple of hours.

PUTTING THE CAKE TOGETHER

First, I covered the cake board the night before and embossed it with a Happy Birthday mat. I hot-glued the ribbon around the sides of the board. You don't want to do the cake board more than a day in advance or it will start to crack, yet you really can't do it right before you need it because when you add the cake, the fondant will move because it will be too soft. I find that doing it the day before is perfect. I wait at least two hours before adding the ribbon.

The next day, I covered the cake in blue fondant, baby blue Satin Ice, right from the bucket. To make the fence, I started with the "gate." I rolled out a piece of fondant, used a "wood grain" mold, and then used an oval cutter to cut into the fondant. I then cut off the base, so that it was level, cut a heart in the middle with a tiny cutter, then used a ruler and X-acto knife to cut apart into pieces. I used gum glue on the back of the center piece and added that onto the cake first, then spaced out the rest accordingly.

I then rolled out a long, very thin pieces of fondant, used the wood grain mold again, and gum-glued the pieces around the circumference of the cake, the same height all around. I made this part very thin because once the fence posts are added on top, I didn't want them to look like they were bulging.




I started adding fence posts on top of those. After that was done, I added a latch and tiny hinges to the gate, and used the end of a paintbrush to indent where the nails would go.

 I then went around the outside of the cake and added the stems of the flowers, using green fondant in an extruder. I added the flowers on top with royal icing, and added the leaves to the bottom.

PROBLEM WITH CRACKING

When you are adding a heavy figurine to the top of a cake, make sure to place dowels underneath where that figurine will sit. I did that in the end, but first I just placed the rabbit on top to check out the placement with the watering can, etc., and that was just too much weight for even a few minutes. The back of the cake developed two cracks. I couldn't repair them so I had to cover them up. I had already used my flowers so I quickly made little bluebells out of some blue gumpaste and added them with royal icing. Came out nice, eh? Looks like they were meant to be there! Ah, the tricks of the trade!!

You can add dowels in the middle then cover it with an embossed circle of fondant that has dried (or any other shape), like I did below. I did this to place my rabbit on once I got to the site. I packed him in a box and secured with plastic wrap and tissue paper.

FINAL CAKE

And here he is! Our little Peter, getting into trouble in the garden!