How I Made the Par-tay Cake and Cupcakes

 I have had so many people ask how I did the girls' cake and cupcakes I decided to do a blog post about it.

First of all, anyone can do this, really you can. Can you play with Play Dough? Can you roll it in a ball?  Can you make a snake?  Then you can do this, for realies. I usually look at something and say, "I can do that." But very rarely to I ever get the chance to actually follow through. I was looking into what exactly I was going to do for their birthday. I started looking at farm animal cupcakes and came across this:

Farm Animal Cupcakes
I was **this close** to doing this.  If you can get past the perkiness...they also have other theme party ideas.  I got the idea for the long horse face cupcake from the zebra in their zoo animal party video.  

I looked around the web for several hours and found a ton of how to videos out there about fondant.  So I had a test run with pink fondant from Walmart.  It is in their cake decorating section.

After watching this:
How to make a fondant pig, 

This little guy was my first attempt. 

 

 Why is he facing away?  Because he is otherwise known as...

Pycho Piggy!!

Ahhhhh!!!!  He wasn't always psycho looking.  He started out with holes for eyes, then I tried to color the eyes with blue edible marker.  Can you say disaster?  Then I filled in the holes with black fondant and viola!  Psycho Piggy was born.

Then I made this little piggy...

And I realized, not only could I do it, but it was dang fun!  So I went out and got more fondant and gel food color and set to work.  and worked.  and worked.  and worked into the night until 3:30 came around.  It was wonderfully fun but time consuming.  Plus, I kinda waited until 2 days before.  Umm, yeah, I don't recommend that.

So here are the links I used to help me and some close-up pictures of the figures. 

I got the idea for the above pig from these links:

Cupcake Tower of Farm Animals by Blue Cupcake  and Barnyard Cupcake Tower
When I first saw these cakes I fell head over heels in love with them.  Never mind that my sweet hubby sent me this very picture several months before the party and told me I could do something like it.  I totally poo-pooed him off.  No way could I do that!  Look at those horses!!  I ended up making some of my animals based on this cake.

like my sitting cow

and my horse

 

Oh, my horse!  My loverly horsie!  I'm pretty much in love with him.  Is it the horseshoes?  the side swiped hair?  the sweet smile?  I don't know but he is my new boyfriend.  He still sits on my counter today waiting for me to get acrylic spray so I can preserve him foreva.  **Happy happy sigh**

Farmyard Theme Fondant Cake
I got LOTS of my ideas from this one like my standing pig (above)

my standing cow

 

my standing duck 

 

 and my sheep

Where's his mouth?

Ahhh...there it is

Another view

I also found these videos helpful when making the sheep.

How to make a fondant sheep part1   and 2

And while I was at it, I made a horse based on these animals, too.

I also got the idea for the sides of the cake from the Farmyard Theme Cake

I used brown fondant for the fence and tip # 223

You can go to this Wilton page for grass icing tips

 

I used these videos

How to Make a Duck Part 1   and 2

to make this guy with his huge beak

I made several animal heads like the ones above and put them on the tops of the cupcakes.  The ladybugs are from a cupcake kit that my friend Sara gave me. 

I continued my search and found:
More Farm Cupcake Toppers - When I saw these, I knew I could do it.

So I did

In the end, at 3:30 a.m. I had the cake and all the animals and needed a set-up.  I had bought bandanna tissue paper so I wrapped it around a round cake pan and that is what the green cake is sitting on.  Then I needed a place for all the other animals to hang out so I covered another cake pan with a cow pattern bandanna.  Had it not been 3:30 in the morning, I may have thought about doing all that with actual cake and fondant.  Ack!  Next time, maybe.  I already have 1 request from a fellow MOM for her twin's 2nd birthday next year.  I can't wait to get to make these cuties again!

So this post is already sooo long.  I am going to put together another post about the tools I used and the techniques I found best.  It won't take a month...hopefully.

 Oh!  I found these today (Where were they a month ago??) - This is a fabulous video about how to make figures.  They make a panda bear but it an be used for anything really.

Making Fondant Figures Part 1
Making Fondant Figures Part 2

There are really a lot of links out there on step by step instructions.