If you missed it, be sure to check out How to Make a Standing Owl Cake, part 1. In that post, I shared about how to assemble and stack up the cakes to get the basic owl cake. Â In part 2, I’m going to share the major components for decorating this cake.
Here’s what you’ll need:
- fondant for the main owl color (pale blue in my case), plus white, yellow, black, brown, and orange.
- supplies to roll out fondant (I prefer The Mat)
- fondant smoothers
- pastry wheel or pizza cutter
- sugar glue and a small paint brush
- small skewers (to attach the beak and hat)
- egg/oval cookie cutter (for the eyes)
- small round cutters (for the eyes)
- gum paste veining tool
- daisy cookie cutter
- rice cereal treats (for the hat)
- small floral wires (for the hat)
Step 1:Â If done with the same dimensions as my cake, it will be around 10-12″ tall, so you’ll need to roll out a large circle of fondant, at least 24 inches in diameter. Then lift it and drape it over the standing cakes.
Step 2: Using your (dry) hands and/or fondant smoothing paddles, begin to smooth out the fondant, from the top down to the bottom. I like to smooth down a couple of inches at a time, all the way around (on a turntable) and keep working my way down until it’s finished. Â When it’s smooth all the way to the bottom, use a pastry wheel to trim it even with the board.
Step 3:Â Now you’re ready to start decorating. First up, for the owl’s belly, roll out some white fondant and cut a circle approximately 5-6 inches round. I used a small Pyrex bowl flipped over as my guide. Attach it to the bottom half of the ball with sugar glue.
Step 4: To add the wings, roll out the blue fondant (or the color to match your owl) and use the same round cutter or small bowl as a guide to cut out the wings, except don’t cut all the way around, but instead cut it into a teardrop shape:
Step 5: Attach the wings on either side with sugar glue. Be sure to slightly overlap them on either side of the belly.
Step 6: Use a Jem Tool #12 to make impressions on the belly to give the appearance of feathers. If you don’t have a tool like that, you could also use round frosting tips and push them in halfway.
This is what the Jem tool looks like on the end – I’m not sure if there’s another name for one of these:
Step 7:Â For the owls head, the first thing to make now is the ears. Roll out a rope of fondant… pretty thick – maybe an inch around. Cut two sections, just over an inch long, then roll them into balls.
Step 8: Using your thumb, make an impression in the enter of the ball, then begin to shape it so that there’s a point at the top and it’s flat on one side. When I get the shape close to what I want, I use a ball tool to make a really smooth even impression for the inside of the ears.
Step 9: Use sugar glue to attach the ears to the top of the head on either side.
Step 10: Roll out white fondant and cut out large ovals for the eyes. I used an Easter egg cutter for these:
Step 11:Â Using yellow fondant, make the beak. It should be cone-shaped. After it’s shaped, place s small skewer into the flat side and use sugar glue on and around the skewer.
Step 12: Use sugar glue to attach the eyes, then the beak to the center-front of the cake.
Step 13: Using black and green fondant, finish the details on the eyes with small round cutters. Use tiny balls of white fondant to give the eyes a little “sparkle”.
Step 14:Â I don’t have pictures of this step and it is optional, but at this time, I used brown fondant to cover the board around the owl and used a gum paste tool to make it look like wood grain.
You can see a tutorial for how to do a similar technique here except I did the wood grain in a circle around the cake instead of in straight lines underneath it.
Step 15: Use orange fondant and flower cutter to cut out the feet. Place them directly onto the board or on the “wood grain” if you do that step.
I also used a “1″ cutter from this Fox Run Numbers cutter set for the number on his belly and funky alphabet cutters for the lettering around the cake board.
Step 16: For one final detail, I made the party hat from rice cereal treats, then once it was hardened, I covered and decorated it with homemade marshmallow fondant.
The tassels sticking out of the top were small floral wires covered in fondant and after it was finished, I attached it to the cake with a small dowel rod.
And that’s it! I think I covered all the details and I was really happy with the way it all turned out:
To go along with this cake, I also made a tiny standing owl smash cake and some owl cupcakes. You can see them and lots more pictures of the finished cake over at RoseBakes.com.
Happy Caking!
Rose
Leave a Reply